“This is the only show in Shanghai where you’ll see some hot boys,” joked a friend at Ximon Lee, the last runway presentation at the Shanghai collections. “You’ll see pretty girls and classic Chinese Tai Tai’s [a colloquial term for a wealthy, married lady], those kinds of models, but only here you’ll get hot men!”
The venue for Lee’s steamy procession of smoke-shows was the smokier Shanghai club Heim, which reopened at a new location earlier this year. For the uninitiated, Lee is a Chinese born Korean, Berlin-based menswear designer who launched his label in Brooklyn in 2014 after studies at Parsons. He was shortlisted for the 2015 LVMH Prize and was the first menswear designer to win the H&M Design Award that same year. Lee has a fair share of well-earned clout, but has for years moved relatively subtly, shrouded by the cavernous club culture atmosphere that has long informed his clothes.
This collection, Lee said backstage, was loosely inspired by the coming of age stories in the Japanese cult film All About Lily Chou Chou. He ruminated on the idea of personal metamorphosis, and appeared to embrace the tensions of being young—feeling invincible, developing a sense of nostalgia, the pressure of potential—by constructing a collection that projected some endearing awkwardness.
If none of this sounds particularly sexy or like a wardrobe ripe for a good party, it’s because Lee’s primary preoccupation isn’t sex appeal, and neither is the club. Some things come naturally, though, so his proposal was full of cheeky and undeniably cool menswear styles: micro shorts, one-shoulder draped tops or embellished tank tops, glossy shirting, and a pair of satiny boxer shorts that a fellow attendee reported feature a built-in jockstrap. A run of novel and funky button-downs were the most compelling: The short sleeves on one were actually dress shirt cuffs, while another’s were knitted to longer panels to create full-length sleeves.
This show marked Lee’s return to the runway in Shanghai. “This season has been challenging but it felt meaningful to do a show because I want to feel proud,” he said. Lee had been showing his collection via lookbook and in showrooms. While it’s good to be able to see his work up close—don’t let the barely-thereness of Lee’s garments fool you, he’s quite the deft technical designer—these clothes are all best experienced in context.
The after-party that followed the show took place in the same location: Between the techno faithfuls stomping in place where the makeshift runway had been earlier and the fashion crowd gathering outside to catch up at the tail-end of a long and eventful season, it was a chance to bear witness to Lee’s brand of metropolitan, rave-ready sexiness in full throttle.
