6 Runway Shows From Shanghai Fashion Week

Shanghai Fashion Week’s Spring Summer 25 runway schedule had it all. From newcomers like Ya Yi and Hengdi Wang to rooftop locations and urban pet wear—here’s a curated selection of some of the most memorable catwalks on the schedule.

Samuel Guì Yang

Held on a rooftop overlooking the banks of the Suzhou River, Samuel Guì Yang’s runway was a breezy, carefree affair that drew the city’s fashion elite. The location was well chosen: its name was used after Shanghai began to trade with the world. The brand, founded in 2015, prides itself on being a conduit for Eastern and Western design thinking, ultimately creating a new Chinese style.

Here, Chinese-style Pit shirts, meng tops and Mandarin-collar looked fresh and modern. Washed sky-blue denim fabrics and corn-yellow crinkled poplin mixed with jade and Chrysanthemum prints. It’s chic, elegant, and, above all, effortless. This season, Samuel Guì Yang (run by founder Samuel Yang and head of design Erik Litzén) announced a collaboration with skincare brand Herbeast featuring lipstick in a silk pouch made from deadstock fabrics.

Weiren

Creative Director Wei Ran is based between New York and Shanghai. Wei graduated from Parsons’ MFA Fashion Design and Society Program in 2022, where she honed an interdisciplinary approach to fashion. Now, her work aims to create a new visual language that blends the physical and virtual which has earned her editorial in prestigious titles like Dazed, Numero, and V Magazine.

This season’s theme revolved around transparent materials, with the designer developing innovative glassmaking techniques to evoke ephemeral, transitory moments. The provocative collection at the showcasing platform Labelhood featured signature metallic fringe and liquid metal textures in abstract forms, bubble-shaped glass ornaments, and translucent fabrics frozen in time. It’s wearable art, but not for the faint-hearted.

Ya Yi

A nomination for the LVMH Prize earlier this year meant that Ya Yi’s show was a hot ticket at SHFW. A Spanish-Chinese heritage sets designer Yay Chen Zhou—who set up her brand in 2022—apart from her contemporaries. Furthermore, she uses her design language to explore the complex identity of Asian immigrant women and women’s labor in her poetic craft-led projects.

Spring Summer 25 explored the interplay between the maker and the user, the craftsmen and the connoisseur. It delved into the craft of papier mache dating back to the Han Dynasty. Here, rice paper moulded the body into armor with silhouettes inspired by lace-making patterns. A clever and very beautiful comment on exchange value.

Oude Waag

Oude Waag’s Spring Summer 25 collection takes inspiration from the last of life’s celebrations—the funeral. The show was a religious experience in itself featuring restrained and delicate designs that are a mediation between founder Yin Jingwei and his morality. Yin explained: “In today’s cultural context, it is not merely a linguistic expression, but a life philosophy. It serves as a reminder that in a world overwhelmed by information and materialism, we must never be oblivious to what’s most precious—our souls.”

The collection’s title was drawn from the gospel hymn, The Paramount Soul. Despite the solemn starting point, it shows Yin’s deft understanding of draping and the body. His barely there aesthetic is perfectly on trend and offers seductive and striking looks that seductively wrap and flatter the body.

Ja Cai

This London-based brand usually shows at London Fashion Week but treated Chinese audiences to a memorable runway show—with a twist. Spring Summer 25 developed the brand’s academic design language (called Algorithmic Modular System) which is based on a dialogue with the designer and the wearer. It proposes unlimited combinations and the harmonization of individual pieces, thereby advancing a sustainable solution to seasonless fashion.

And now, you can even mix and match with your furry friend. Dog lovers were in for a treat as the show included an urban pet collaboration with local line PIP—which featured SHFW’s first guide dog. After the runway, founder Jiaen Cai jetted to Shenzhen for the Vogue China Fashion Fund 2024 in Shenzhen.

Hengdi Wang

Last but by no means least is Hengdi Wang who, after graduating in 2024 with a Master’s degree from the London College of Fashion, cut his teeth with the designer Susan Fang. This season was the brand’s Spring Summer 25 couture debut at Labehoodhood. The performative show saw models slowly stalk the runway making elaborate poses in designs inspired by Wang’s muse, the Swiss artist H.R. Giger, known for his biomechanical style.

15 looks explored Giger’s aesthetic in a mind-bending line-up of 3D-printed protruding spines, maternal eggs, and exoskeletons culminating in a final figure encased in ruched fabric. Ultimately, Hengdi Wang asks the question: “As technology gradually infiltrates our bodies and lives, is it changing us, or are we reshaping ourselves through it?”