Shuting Qiu has never been one to do things by fifty percents, however, for spring she seemed to have actually disregarded restraint entirely. Entitled Untamed Flower, the collection envisioned a world without guidelines, where flowers grow to unlikely percentages, animal prints can be found in unlikely shades, and plumes cover every little thing.
A graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Qiu has plainly taken its motivation of innovative freedom to heart, pushing self-expression to the point of near-fearlessness. Her abundant, eccentric eveningwear combines florals, polka dots, leopard areas, sequins, lace, and printed silks, all in a saturated rainbow scheme. There were mini A-line gowns, slender shapes, ballerina shapes, and voluminous developments that seemed ready to grow. Feathered hems quivered with every step, while lengthy manteaux and bathrobes covered the designs in whirls of lavish plumage.
Feathers, Qiu explained, stimulate the agility and flexibility of birds. They also offered the collection its sense of activity. The designer’s Chinese heritage emerged in silk, jacquard, needlework, and the job of the local craftsmens she teams up with in Hangzhou; the hand-painted prints mirror a lifelong relationship with color, which, she said, began at the age of 9, and reveals no signs of cooling.
After a couple of periods of experimenting with black and quieter notes, Qiu said she wished to go back to herself. Mission achieved. She wasn’t thinking about subtlety; a more-is-more sensibility was quite the factor. Yet under the visual pep was a meaningful sentence: fashion as an exercise in unfettered creative imagination, with nature much less a model of calmness than an excuse for wonderful excess.
