Louis Shengtao Chen SS23「Fly Me to the Moon」is the designer’s clear nod and innate yearn for purity. It’s a psychological tango, stepping back and forth across the line of love and hate, cold and warm, bright and dark. In an emotional evolution that drives the label’s core, Louis Shengtao Chen grows in the candlelight, and embarks on a voyage onto the darker, mysterious facade of the moon.
The collection derives from the designer’s personal journey, combines the beauty, devotion, struggle, pain and optimism towards the eternal notion of love, making a statement that is softer, clearer and full of edge: To love is to stay naive.
Innocence hides in between sharp tentacles, passion walks along the lines of denim tears, Louis Shengtao Chen’s signature silhouettes are reworked into romantic yet everyday pieces, walking into a hopeless dream of “armed fragility”.
CHAPTER 1 ：Heart Throb
Like a naïf child, yet to discover the heights of the sky. A sudden feeling of heart throbbing, emotions run high and dry. The first chapter of the collection symbolises a subtle start of love. Starting with Louis’ signature lace slip dress, the fairy-like drape flows in the air, a tattooed on “Adrian’s Cupid” echos that on the designer’s chest himself embroidered across the heart. Colours and blurs in shades of red, is in collaboration with Chinese artist GREENDUCK showcasing an anonymous lovers caress. Burn, burn, the amour blows bright and scorches the terrains of the land. Innocence go up in flames.
CHAPTER2：A Somber Relief
Tides beat under the moonlight, the ocean lays down its story. Relief in the calmness after the storm, wounds and flaws are revealed without fear. In the second chapter of the collection, destruction is a figurative expression of the tearing of love. The towering angel wings and the ceremonial wave-layer dresses rejoin in harmony. Chiffon and velvet fuse into tidal waves, crystal clear water degradé into indigo blue, torn denim and jersey armed with the wings of angels, vintage sportswear elements collaged together with embroidered dresses. She sees clarity in the wake of a dream, she shows power in the age of self-defence, she recalls youth in the era of truth.
CHAPTER 3：Contradictions
Louis Shengtao Chen speaks modesty in radicalism. In a moment of awakening, the selfless fire of love contradicts with the armour of self protection. In the third chapter of the collection, spiked dresses represent a sense of protection, edges are sharpened, but cores are softened. The “Cone” shape has been a signature silhouette of Louis since day one. A symbol that represents that of childhood play date toys, of the geometric balance of shapes in the classrooms of art students, on the skin of fairy tale animals curling into hibernation. In the third act of the symphony, the Louis Shengtao Chen cones are enlarged into form, large volumes merge into a theatrical amour of defence, powerfully romantic. In the final stage of Louis’ study of love, it reaches a point of sanity, a state of imminence, and a space of love.