Xander Zhou
Xander Zhou is equal parts excited about and afraid of the future. “In the last year, a lot of inspiration came from my fear,” he told WWD after his theatrical show. “Fear of myself, fear of the world and the future, because I am very excited about the future but at the same time I feel afraid because we don’t know what will happen. So this is all about my fantasy of the future and something unreal.”
Zhou explored the theme of evolution, both from the past and into the future.
In an apt example of this, last season he showed men sporting prosthetic pregnant bellies, whereas this time around they carried the babies* in one pocket of furry hooded sweatshirts (feeding bottles were in the other). Kudos for getting the delivery dates spot-on.
One model came out wearing a full yeti suit in white faux fur, with a “baby” in a matching fuzzy onesie strapped to his middle in Zhou’s take on a Baby Bjorn. It was actually quite cute.
Elsewhere, Zhou’s research into engineering, industrial machinery, surgery and sports was brilliantly mixed up in a collection that offered lots of interesting and wearable ideas in a controlled palette that centered on white, gray, navy and camel, brightened with pops of green, sky blue and red.
Among the highlights were a beige mandarin jacket worn with padded cargo pants and a dusty rose cashmere scarf draped around the neck, the striped knitted ensembles with flared trousers and cutout knees, and an outfit that had a white cardigan over a PVC shirt and neat trousers in an institutional shade of gray.
“Fashion is like a movie for me and I see myself as a director building characters,” Zhou explained, neatly accounting for the five heebie-jeebie-inducing space monsters that closed the show.
*No actual babies were harmed in the making of this show. —