Shuting Qiu had plans to return to Milan Fashion Week last month after a season in Paris. Her scheduled presentation had to be canceled due to unforeseen circumstances, but all is well in the world of Shuting Qiu. Now that the designer is based in Shanghai again, she returned to the Shanghai Fashion Week fold to host an off-calendar presentation for her new collection at the Consulate General of the Kingdom of Belgium in Shanghai. She took over the ground floor of the residence and hosted a reception in its sprawling backward, Belgian waffles included.
It was a full-circle moment for Qiu, who graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and hosted her debut show there back in 2022. It also made sense for the designer to return to SHFW after a few years away. “It’s good to come back to Shanghai to show my creativity and connect with my own roots,” she said, “to connect with my community here.”
True to form, this season Qiu built her collection around her travels, this time to Indonesia. She merged the country’s vibrant spirit with the misty, watercolor-y hues of her native Hangzhou, with the added layer of the landscapes of Xinjiang, a territory in northwest China known for its vast mountain range and for having been on the route of the ancient Silk Road that linked China and the Middle East through trade. Qiu has always been good at selecting beautiful materials to bring life to her collections, but this season her selection was particularly memorable. She chose shimmering tweeds for tailored coats and jackets and stunning metallic floral jacquards for dresses and blouses.
Qiu is at her best where she embraces her own whimsy head-on—her eye for mixing and matching textures, prints, and colors is recognizable, particularly in the context of Shanghai designers. She is clearly most comfortable designing evening wear, and while her tailoring and ready-to-wear don’t quite have the same finesse as her cocktail frocks, this season her menswear showed real potential. Qiu paired a great red double-sided jacket, which the Belgian consul was wearing in a men’s version with high-waisted suiting shorts. The fabric of the bottoms was a tad too light for the desired effect, but this is a promising category for Qiu to expand into as she continues her world tour.
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