Everything You May Have Missed From Fall 2025 Shanghai Fashion Week

“I had no idea they were cooking this hard there!” That was the message at the top of my Instagram inbox when I was in China reporting on Shanghai Fashion Week. Because it happens on the heels of the Paris collections, and the shows in Shanghai are not exposed on social media at the level of their Western counterparts, Shanghai Fashion Week seldom gets the attention or credit it deserves.

But that’s changing—and not just in my Instagram inbox. It was my fourth tour in Shanghai, and I’ve never seen as many Western reporters in town. Together with the increased visibility of labels like Mark Gong and Shushu/Tong (thank celebs like Jennie, Sydney Sweeney, and Olivia Rodrigo for that), Shanghai Fashion Week’s global standing is on the rise. That said, the market in China has been volatile and it’s hit Shanghai’s budding fashion scene hard. The week had noticeably fewer shows on the schedule, and foot traffic was down around the week’s events.

The good news is that Shanghai’s talents have shown remarkable resilience, some homing in on the more commercial sides of their collections and others pushing their creativity to the extreme. This season also saw an abundance of activations by international brands, including exhibitions by Loro Piana, Gucci, and Dolce & Gabbana, plus the opening of Prada’s first stand-alone dining concept in Asia in downtown Shanghai. Without further ado, here’s everything you might have missed from Shanghai Fashion Week.

The Top Collections of the Week

A Knockout “Y3K” Show

WeiRan graduated from Parsons in 2022, and quickly established her label Weiraen in Shanghai. This was her second runway show and it was one of the most talked-about moments of the week, with futuristic couture confections that put the spotlight on her big ambitions. Rather than carving out a commercial line, she’s honing her outlandish creativity in the hopes that it will help her build a more consistent made-to-order business. This collection was inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. She said it was the first time she grounded her collection in a specific theme, and the focus served her well.

Two Names to Watch

Each season in Shanghai, the fashion incubator-cum-retailer Labelhood hosts a Lab showroom that runs parallel to the show schedule. It’s where visitors can find the freshest talents. Among them this time around were returning designer Joyce Bao, whose sophomore collection was a whimsical fever dream of deftly draped and shirred laces, and GG in Red, a Central Saint Martins grad whose outstanding menswear in boiled wool and raw silk with felted or screen-printed motifs had an old-world feel with contemporary appeal.

Boho Arrives in Shanghai

Ili Node and Xu Zhi are bringing boho fever to the Chinese customer. Node’s moody layers alternately swaddled the body or unraveled around it, while Zhi looked to the 1970s interpretation of the boho look for inspiration—his collection was lively and flirty but not weighed down by flounces and frills.

A Sustainable Outlook

Karmuel Young, a Hong Kong-based designer and finalist for the SustAsia sustainable fashion prize, put together a truly one-of-a-kind riff on classic workwear. His roomy jumpsuit can be transformed into both a pair of pants and a jacket or a long overcoat. It’s a remarkable feat of patternmaking, and confirmation that modular fashion doesn’t have to look clumsy or crafty.