Xander Zhou

Xander Zhou studied industrial design in China and fashion design in the Netherlands, finding in this hybridized cultural and professional experience a sense of his own original authorial possibility, a mentality he brings to his colorful, typographically-charged menswear. Beijing-based Zhou launched his label in 2007, quickly becoming the first Chinese designer to present at London Fashion Week, which stands testament to both his natural acumen for pushing boundaries and his abiding cross-cultural literacy. Rather than any time-honored luxury house, he accredits the lion’s share of his fashion influence to the lifelong, unshakable memory of his mother’s one hundred pairs of heels. Zhou thus works more from instinct than history, calibrating design language to invoke personal response and generate relevant affect. Rainbow prints, overlong and cropped cuts, and curious tonal graphic accents adorn his label’s tops, hoodies, and lounge pants. Endlessly apolitical, yet never lacking in irreverent energy, Zhou’s collections speak of what it means to invoke true participation in our decentralized world.