SFW: Content
Yesterday Chinese fashion designer Xiaoling Liao’s show for her near five-year-old brand Content blew me away. Inspired by the topic of love, Xiaoling didn’t take the stereotypical saccharine approach to the warmest, fuzziest feeling of all. Instead, she was intrigued how people who are deeply in love act like they’re high on the drug LSD – “totally crazy.” The Chinese word for love translates as ‘transparency,’ which Xiaoling used a cue to use transparent fabrics – sheer silk organza – digitally printed with translated love letters and poems of Romeo and Juliet, Beethoven and Victor Hugo. A signature of Content, other digital prints included obscured, oversized black and white flowers. A young Chinese visual artist named Boo kicked off the show with a gut-gripping video, where in professing his love to the recipient of the video, pledges to rip his heart out of his chest and give it to her, and smears his entire body in blood-red paint. The show ended with projections of flames on fabric draped from the ceiling. Intense, romantic and very, very loveable presentation.
Xiaoling’s favorite look from her SS13 collection.
