Watch Out for Rui Zhou at Paris Fashion Week
Rui Zhou is making her Paris Fashion Week debut and showing her Fall 2022 collection for her eponymous label. Zhou, born and raised in China, graduated from Parsons School of Design in 2018, and in that same year she made her first appearance at New York Fashion Week, which she returned to in 2019. Zhou has even received the Karl Lagerfeld Prize at the 2021 edition of the LVMH Prize for Young Designers, which helped to boost her recognition and popularity. This year at Paris Fashion Week, Zhou will be showcasing her new collection on Saturday, March 5.
Rui Spring 2022
Celebrities, like Dua Lipa and Solange, have become fans of the young designer. Dua Lipa’s latest cover of Rolling Stone Magazine showed her donning a powerful yet fun Rui Zhou design. The modern and interesting designs of Rui have built a wide fan base around the world. Her success has landed her designs in over 30 major retailers all around the world.
COURTESY OF STYLECASTER
Rui experiments with netted and mesh fabrics to create skin tight dresses and bodysuits. She has noted that she prefers to start her ideas and creations on a mannequin or dress form rather than sketching them out on paper. This unique take on the design drafting process sets Zhou and her brand apart. It allows her creativity to take on new forms; it helps provide her with limitless ideas and concepts.
COURTESY OF METAL MAGAZINE
In an interview with Women’s Wear Daily, Zhou explained that her designs are driven by the “duality in all things — the relationship between matter and being; perfection and imperfections, or skin and clothes.” The titles of her collections remain broad and open to interpretation and imagination as they are meant to be accessible to everyone. For Zhou, the garments are not separate from the body, but rather the garments and body work together to form a beautiful work of art.
Since she was little, she has loved to paint and create art, and as a designer she gets to create art out of fabric. This has translated beautifully into her designs. Her works seem as though they are painted directly onto the body, highlighting every curve that makes everyone unique. While confidence and body positivity were not the main inspiration behind her work, Rui Zhou’s designs lights a fire and sparks confidence in many women. The soft textures and form fitting silhouettes add a feminine touch to the edgy mesh fabrics with holes throughout the garment. The skin-baring designs do not hide or conceal the body, but rather they celebrate it.
Rui AW 2022 “The Slits in Life”
At Paris Fashion Week, Rui will venture outside of the brand’s signature thin, stringy fabrics and showcase designs with thicker, warmer fabrics for the Fall/Winter collection. The new collection has allowed her to work with natural fibers, which she originally has not been able to use to create her ultra-fine fabrics. Rui’s show at Paris Fashion Week is definitely one of the hottest, must-see shows this season.