Enigmatic and grounded in blues, cinnamons and cream, Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Designer Claudia Li’s fall/winter 2017 collection is spellbinding.
Elevated on podiums with mirrored walls, lights flash and dance across Claudia Li’s collection presented in Chelsea’s ArtBeam studios—the perfect location to participate in Li’s transporting experience. As you walk in, you are hypnotized by beams of light in pitch darkness and, more importantly, the illuminated clothes. This is exactly what Li wants. In this trance the girl is English, Parisian and alien. Sometimes she shifts quickly to become each thing, sometimes she’s all of them at once.
The girl is a spy; a traveller of worlds; a keeper of secrets. She wears a billowing lapel coat in deep midnight blue or snap pants with a top, paired with a vest, in burnt orange, which simultaneously accentuates and hides her shape. Li’s pieces champion the odd parts of a woman’s shape, the sharp angle of her elbows, the bulbous curve of her shoulders. The idea of shape, specifically triangulation (see the asymmetrical plaid and wool half vest blazer), is Li’s focus. By blending men’s tailoring with womenswear, Claudia Li makes the shape of a woman mystified and unknowable.
Photos by Bridget Fleming
Li’s palette is earthy, but not as you would expect it. Don’t look for your usual browns and greens because what you’ll find instead are sky blues, soft creams, sheens of beige and pearl and, of course, that warm cinnamon. Texture is also incorporated with visuality and color in refreshing ways. The use of corduroy in Li’s collection softens the requisite hints of the past that allow her collection to travel in time. In doing so, Li doesn’t make an exhibition of the past. Instead the past is impressed upon you. Corduroy, houndstooth, wool, white oxford shirts, paid, denim, leather, shearling and pops of fur make the intangible felt.
This woman is strong, intelligent and a total badass.
