Out of the bubble

Zou and Yea are acutely conscious that China's global fashion moment, despite the global pandemic, is now at hand. "The term 'Made in China' no longer equates with 'cheap' and 'large-scale production' now," they say. "With more and more creative thinking and design forces merging into Chinese brands, the term 'Made in China' has gradually become a symbol we can be proud of. 'Made in China' means something very different to people today and brings with it a new message to the world."

Zou grew up in Shenzhen, then studied womenswear at London College of Fashion, followed by an MA in Menswear Design. During that time, she honed her design skills at prestigious fashion houses such as Alexander McQueen, Erdem and Tom Ford. Likewise, Yea obtained a Masters in Accessory Design at the Royal College of Art and won Best Fashion Item in Paris in 2014 for her "Are We Slaves of Objects Around Us" collection; she also worked as a menswear designer at Armani's Milan headquarters.

For autumn/winter 2020, under the theme "Set Up a Memorial for Those Things That Never Happened", the pair has channelled influences from writing to Vancouver, Canada-based British artist David Spriggs, in what they say is a story about imagination and the creative process itself. "We prefer to extract the vibe and emotions from what we have seen and heard when we digest our ideas for designing, instead of directly translating artistic visual elements," they explain. "The lightness and void in Spriggs's work is a new language for us and that inspires us to describe poetic blurred boundaries." Ultimately, the collection is about future possibilities, and the ambiguous boundary that lies between imagination and reality.