September 21, 2022 |
Sporting frilly sweaters underscored by collegiate treatments, schoolboy shorts, and Mongolian hand-knit jumpers, Yushan Li and Jun Zhou’s moody models emerged, stomping through the double doors of a grand Georgian ballroom decked out with crystal chandeliers and portraiture paintings. With a title like Whirlpool, of course the pair’s elevated brand, Pronounce, would become a maelstrom of cool for SS23.
Continuing to rework the Mao suits and Cheongsam Pronounce has become so known for, alternative tailoring meets street-ready style. Warped and twisted, curling loosely around the body and buckling in at the waist, blazers were at once spliced and reconstructed. Some suits remained sharp, becoming riddled with subversive patchwork and alloy appliques. Plus, persisting with their obsession with the circle motif, the design duo developed a fast-spinning circular pattern that echoed the twirl of a child’s top; dancing across cropped tailoring, cocooning coats and three-dimensional rope pieces.
Elsewhere, Vintage Chinese vinyl dolls wore little versions of the Pronounce kit, like luxury mini-me’s. In keeping with this, retro doll faces were digitally printed onto shirts using eco-friendly technology; shrunken heads incessantly repeated on a pair of short-shorts alluding to the herd mentality of the masses; and profiles appeared disfigured in the hand-beaded embroidery of a knitted vest.
For the main course, the trousers were served as a delicacy; some made using mercerized yarn and all ballooning out from the hip before tapering perfectly into a loose-fit straight-leg that guests left gushing about.
Pronounce’s SS23 edit was an enormously wearable co-ed collection, tying together the phantom threads that run between Eastern and Western codes of dress with ease.
Photography courtesy of Pronounce.
