Alexander Wang, Phillip Lim, Humberto Leon: Asian-American designers have long been at the forefront of the fashion game. But Chinese-Chinese designer Shangguan Zhe—the one who sent models down the runway in giant paper-maché skeleton hands at LC:M this summer—is on the up-and-up, too. The 29 year old's label, SANKUANZ, is making a name with its South Park references, weed hats, LED grills, and trippy collage of Mandarin characters that translate into words like "Acid" (酸) and "In Hell" (地獄裡) . “I wanted to ironically poke fun at elitism through the combination of these elements,” he tells us of his newly arrived Fall/Winter 2014 collection.
Zhe's studio, littered with knickknacks and memorabilia, is in Xiamen, China, a city where most residents are culturally conservative and not tapped into global fashion, he says. But, that hasn't stopped him from making sharp political and cultural observations through his designs. “I’m into cultures that are constructed from the bottom up, and youth culture is one of them.”
After sending a photographer to his studio in Xiamen, we caught up with the designer via e-mail to talk inspirations, working with remote Tibetan craftsmen, and Russian prison tattoos. And, just when we thought he couldn't get any cooler, he threw in a Kerouac quote and dished on his childhood arcade addiction to Street Fighter. Read on...
Shop all SANKUANZ here
GRACE WANG: Where are you right now?
SHANGGUAN ZHE: I live and work in China’s Xiamen.
Tell us a bit about your background. You studied graphic design at Xiamen University; how did you get into designing?
At first, the decision to become a fashion designer was obviously because I like clothes (I collect a lot of vintage clothing) and the process of producing them. So, there’s this kind of inseparable cohesion of the process and the product that I like. But, what really inspired and motivated me was the culture and spirit I could express and showcase through clothes.
You reference South Park and Japanese manga in your collections. You also look like you have quite a collection of manga in your studio. What are your current anime/manga obsessions?
The Fall/Winter 2014 collection used a lot of cartoon images with cultural elements, like the South Park graphics and S&M cartoon masks. I rarely read comics now, but I loved to when I was a kid. My company’s Chinese name translates literally to “Child Tiger,” (童虎) which is a character from the Japanese manga Saint Seiya. He never gets old and is forever a warrior, a bit like the final line in Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums which says, “O ever youthful, O ever weeping.”
You said in another interview, “We hope to express a serious topic in an easy and interesting way.” What is this serious topic?
The intention of the Spring/Summer 2015 collection is to pay tribute to youth who lost their liv
Zhe's studio, littered with knickknacks and memorabilia, is in Xiamen, China, a city where most residents are culturally conservative and not tapped into global fashion, he says. But, that hasn't stopped him from making sharp political and cultural observations through his designs. “I’m into cultures that are constructed from the bottom up, and youth culture is one of them.”
After sending a photographer to his studio in Xiamen, we caught up with the designer via e-mail to talk inspirations, working with remote Tibetan craftsmen, and Russian prison tattoos. And, just when we thought he couldn't get any cooler, he threw in a Kerouac quote and dished on his childhood arcade addiction to Street Fighter. Read on...
Shop all SANKUANZ here
GRACE WANG: Where are you right now?
SHANGGUAN ZHE: I live and work in China’s Xiamen.
Tell us a bit about your background. You studied graphic design at Xiamen University; how did you get into designing?
At first, the decision to become a fashion designer was obviously because I like clothes (I collect a lot of vintage clothing) and the process of producing them. So, there’s this kind of inseparable cohesion of the process and the product that I like. But, what really inspired and motivated me was the culture and spirit I could express and showcase through clothes.
You reference South Park and Japanese manga in your collections. You also look like you have quite a collection of manga in your studio. What are your current anime/manga obsessions?
The Fall/Winter 2014 collection used a lot of cartoon images with cultural elements, like the South Park graphics and S&M cartoon masks. I rarely read comics now, but I loved to when I was a kid. My company’s Chinese name translates literally to “Child Tiger,” (童虎) which is a character from the Japanese manga Saint Seiya. He never gets old and is forever a warrior, a bit like the final line in Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums which says, “O ever youthful, O ever weeping.”
You said in another interview, “We hope to express a serious topic in an easy and interesting way.” What is this serious topic?
The intention of the Spring/Summer 2015 collection is to pay tribute to youth who lost their liv