CI You came back to China right after graduating from the London College of Fashion. What did you want to express with SHUSHU/TONG? 

LL There weren’t many fashion brands for girls ten years ago. In terms of luxury brands, I think only Miu Miu was focused on a super-feminine aesthetic and we knew that was what we wanted to do. Also, both of us are so in love with Japanese anime.

YJ All the romantic ruffles, all the bows. We loved watching anime when we were designing as students. 

CI There’s an ongoing conversation about girlishness versus empowerment in fashion. Some see empowerment expressed in a power shoulder, yet your work is the opposite. How has this idea of girlishness changed in the last ten years? 

LL Our concept of girlishness has changed as we have aged. For us, being girly is not the opposite of the power shoulder. In anime, girls have power, and wearing shorts and ruffles never means being weak. We try to find the right way to make something look more than “just cute” because that’s boring. Using bows is not as easy as people think. Every little detail of the bow is critical to the perspective – the shape, the size, the fabric, the amount, the way of tying, where to put it, and the combination of all of the above. 

CI How else has the brand evolved with you? 

LL When you’re a young designer, you care less about whether your fabric is comfortable. Every time we design something now we have to make sure it’s wearable

YJ I’m always adding pockets to skirts and dresses. 

CI It’s exciting to see the rise of original Chinese brands made in China that are making a mark globally. How do you approach being a Chinese brand within an international market, and how do you incorporate this into your storytelling? 

LL The brand name is Chinese and I have Shanghai on my Instagram account bio, so I think it’s quite obvious we’re based in China, but we don’t use stereotypical Chinese elements like the dragon. It’s essential for us to take a cautious approach in presenting our heritage, ensuring it is neither oversimplified nor superficial. Every seemingly simple Chinese element carries a rich backstory. It takes time to truly absorb the nuances, and takes more time to interpret them into our design language. Nevertheless, we have always been exploring and experimenting with traditional Chinese craftsmanship. For example, we researched traditional Su embroidery and incorporated some of its sewing techniques into the spring/summer 2024 collection. Chinese culture is in our blood, but manifested subtly. 

CI  The Chinese ecosystem of both e-commerce and physical retail sales is very different to the Western way of doing things.

LL Yes, platforms like [business-to-consumer retail platform] Tmall are accessible to everyone and make it very easy to have your own stores. 

YJ We’re finding people buy everything on Douyin [Chinese TikTok]. 

CI In the West, luxury brands don’t use apps to drive sales necessarily but rather for storytelling. The issue is that luxury brands become so controlled that they don’t know how to produce the DIY content that you need for a platform like TikTok. Is that the same issue with Douyin? 

LL It is absolutely the same for Douyin. It is truly a dilemma to keep a coherent brand story while producing high-quality, organic content. 

CI The next 12 months are going to see a challenging shift in the global fashion market. How do you balance your focus between global stockists and your thriving Chinese domestic market? 

LL Both markets are essential for us, financially. Our biggest market is North America and our biggest clients are SSENSE, Dover Street Market, Nordstrom, and Shopbop. We’ve been quite lucky over the last ten years, so we’re definitely feeling some pressure. The most important step for us was choosing to have our online store five years ago and then opening our retail store three years ago. As a designer brand, if you rely on wholesalers too much you become very passive, especially designer brands like ours that aren’t luxury. You don’t have much negotiating power, so wholesalers will say they want you and then say they don’t want you; you never know what is going to happen next season. Having your own channel makes you feel safe because you always have a flagship where you can sell your next collection. We did an exclusive capsule collection for Matches Fashion and they didn’t even release it before they went bankrupt. The stock ended up selling in our store because it didn’t ship out. 

CI Where do you get your inspiration? Are you still into anime? 

LL I’m still into anime, and we’re people who like to spend a lot of time at home. I love to have movie marathons on the weekends. If I had to only watch one director, it would be Alfred Hitchcock. I really love the make-up and the glamour of some of his characters – and then you see that character killing someone. .