Still in a suits when summer hits?
Then step right up to Sean Suen’s spring collection where his sharp tailoring dallied with the Beijing bikini, an unabashed move that sees locals roll their tops to flash their midrifs.
For the Chinese designer, this meme-worthy cliché of men of middling age and shape letting it all hang out was one way in which he peeled back layers in the material and metaphorical sense.
Backstage, he said that reflecting on his 10 years of showing in Paris left him wanting to revisit his older work and “be more personal.”
Par for the course were his proclivity for clean suiting, a taste for volumes and riffs on Chinese heritage, from imperial-era scholar hats to that belly baring.
New here was the sly sexily unbuttoned impression he teased out of hemlines going northward in the heat thanks to clever trompe-l’oeil constructions.
Take a Mandarin-collar top that was bunched upwards and looked rumpled to boot, an effect obtained thanks to invisible buttoned tabs and strategically placed pintucks.
Elsewhere, he played with classic European shirt collars, using them to bare the nape of the neck, figure untucked shirttails or make trousers look like they hung open, flashing racy cut-out underwear made with Chinese label Pour Lui.
In careless hands, such moves could skew gimmicky. Balanced with servings of impeccably tailored slacks — how their legs fell tightly controlled by the number of pleats — it felt like proof that letting loose was certainly a good look on Suen.
