When Huishan Zhang arrived in London ahead of his AW22 fashion show earlier this year, he hadn’t stepped foot in the capital since the pandemic. And because he and his team were unsure it would happen at all, they opted for an intimate presentation.
“When we heard we could do the show at the last minute we were very excited to meet friends, clients and the press again – it was a wonderful moment to share,” the Chinese-born designer tells us from his atelier in Qingdao, when we speak on Zoom. “It was a small show that almost went back to the roots of the house and where we started.”
Looking for “a new generation of couture client” for the romantic collection, he imagined how Italian society darling Marella Agnelli, an aristocrat and patron of the arts, and Babe Paley, a 20th-century American tastemaker, both who were friends of novelist Truman Capote, would dress today. The show itself celebrated a return to pre-pandemic glamour, “It was really about bringing back that energy”.
On his return to China,
