One of the strange elements of getting older is the development of hindsight. Distance and time foster understanding and often lead to reappraisal: our childhoods, our earliest memories and formative years, our fathers and mothers and their own choices.
CPlus series designer Boogie Liu grew up with a single mother. The designer says she has always remained in his mind, a source of inspiration and strength, but this season she has re-emerged as a muse. Through her, Liu discovered her fascination with clothing early on, observing and studying her relationship with fashion and style. This season, he decided to relive her life story and travel to the era of planned economy in the 1960s, the Cultural Revolution period in the 1970s, the post-Mao era in the 1980s, and China’s reform and opening up. The last period coincided with his mother’s middle age. The 1990s ushered in a revolution, both in fashion and style as he saw it in the world and at home.
The resulting series is an experiment in time warping, with a palpable sense of energy and trembling. A finalist for the second Vogue China Fashion Fund, Liu explained after the show that upcycling was a key design element this season. Back in August, he received several samples to rework for an assignment for the fund: He collaged floral satin and chiffon with lace, laser-cut flowers on the gown’s hem, and shredded abstract prints, Weave it into one piece. “These patterns and styles are what my mother would wear, and it gives me direction,” Liu said. “My mother was also very frugal, so many of the items in this collection are inconsistent in length and size and not always proportional.” The key word Liu uses to define “mom” style is compromise: a balance between old and new, contemporary. The time before and after Mom, between what she longed for and what was within reach.
Liu contrasts China’s unique brand of pre-opening economic austerity with the beginnings of his own fashion awakening in the 1990s, when Western influence began to filter in. Wear them around the waist and use them to match denim skirts, dresses and jeans; he knots them around the body and fades them to white. He showed them to plain men who had been shrunk or shredded into dresses. One of the standouts was a T-shirt dress made from a scanned draped plaid shirt, which was then turned into a flat print collaged with another graphic.
Elsewhere, Liu transforms lightweight sweaters into ultra-stretchy layered skirts and frays the edges of cotton twill to create cool, draped pieces to match his textured knits. His menswear this season has a better sense of direction, rising from what was often considered an afterthought in Liu’s past work to an important element of his vision. If this lineup lacks cohesion at times, it makes up for it in ideas, most of which are exciting and worthy of repeated consideration. He’ll definitely be revisiting the series for inspiration. In hindsight, it was indeed a strange thing.
