April 16, 2024 |
Sankuanz is a brand that roots itself in cross-pollination. Using silhouette to blend luxury design with streetwear and Eastern with Western aesthetics, Shangguan Zhe’s Shanghai-based label is diverse, avant-garde and always pushes fashion forward. Making its debut with a catwalk at Shanghai Fashion Week in 2013, Sankuanz quickly became known in international circles and was even named as an LVMH Prize finalist in 2015. Reflecting on its cross-cultural influences, the brand decided to show on the Paris Fashion Week Menswear schedule from 2016 onwards, as well as its Chinese stomping grounds.
It’s AW24 collection (shown in Paris back in February and in Shanghai just last week) was entitled ‘Seven Diamond Lines of Kangrinboqê’ and platformed the multi-faceted core ethos of Zhe’s long-standing brand. Speaking on his key inspirations, Zhe tells 10, “Seven Diamond Lines is the title of a Guru Rinpoche prayer, and also the title of a song by the musician Tadi [feat. DJKR] which the prayer inspired. I discovered this song accidentally during my trip to the Himalayas last July and was greatly inspired. It became the starting point of the whole collection.”
The resulting collection that came down the runway was an eclectic ode to traditional Chinese dressing with a contemporary twang. Generous drapes of fabric were skilfully warped into loose-fitting jackets edited with collar designs reminiscent of Tibetan khata scarves. Earthy browns, tranquil blues and camouflage prints were incorporated to reflect the natural landscape of the Himalayas, whilst the brand’s signature Bumpy sneaker, which features a chunky sole that seems to melt into the ground, popped up throughout for an air of offbeat youthfulness. Ever-equipped with a dissident edge, graffiti was spritzed onto low-slung jeans and trousers, incorporating a rebellious energy that was archetypal Sankuanz.
That rebellious spirit is something Zhe tries to incorporate in all of his designs. Head to the Sankuanz website and you’ll be greeted with a statement that describes the brand’s focus on “genderless oriental figures with a sense of rebellion.” Speaking on what influenced this focus, Zhe says, “Gender has been seen as a binary. However, with the dagger – a signature symbol of Sankuanz – we aim to challenge that. We should not put ourselves into a binary…What’s more important is to extract the divinity from the image of man and woman.” Extracting that essence “from the image of man and woman,” as Zhe describes, is communicated predominantly in Sankuanz’s tailoring. No garment is made for a man or for a woman specifically, but rather, they’re completely fluid, inspired by the way fabric can drape on the body as opposed to emulating a socially constructed definition of dress. “An important thing during my tailoring process is the integration of a distinct silhouette and decorative details,” Zhe says. “I was deeply attracted by the traditional garments of the Himalayan region but as a modern shape like an oversized cocoon, and the unique way of draping around the body when worn. As temperatures rise and fall drastically between day and night, Tibetan herdsmen let the sleeves of the robe hang loose beside their waist during the daytime, and then use the robe as a large blanket to wrap around the body at night. During the last several seasons of Sankuanz, I have been trying to blend these inspirations into modern ways to dress.”
Growing up in China had a distinct effect on Zhe and the clothes he would later create. “All my creativity comes from that environment I grew up in,” Zhe states. “It was the China during its reform and opening up, fulfilled with hope. The great weight of the past had been left behind and the brand-new future was yet to come. We were surrounded by a not-so-Chinese culture and a second-hand Western culture. That era was a grey-zone between the Eastern and Western cultures, classic and modern; in that zone, creativity can sometimes become an isolated dot, with nothing to inherit, and nothing to pass on, where I had to find my lineage of creativity.”
Starting his brand was Zhe’s way to channel this personal “lineage of creativity”, but it wasn’t an easy road to get there. “I didn’t want to get a full-time job after graduating from Xiamen University in 2007 where I had majored in graphic design,” Zhe says. “I started to try to make some garments and at the beginning, it was just some ready-made T-shirts and sweatshirts that I printed my designs on. Then I wanted to go beyond mere prints, so I started to design some simple garments like shirts and sold them in some small shops in the neighbourhood where I was living near the university. It is a neighbourhood of young people, musicians, artists, poets, graffiti artists and skaters. They were my first customers.”
Sankuanz is a brand that hasn’t lost sight of its origins. The essence of this eclectic neighbourhood of young people that inspired Zhe to start the brand remains steadfast in its existence today. The designer’s creative process is rooted firmly, as he notes in combining “many disciplines and references to create a collage that makes no sense.” Speaking on the different experiences he can draw inspiration from, Zhe lists an aptly random mix: “A fresco in a church at The Vatican, an electronic club in Berlin, a maid café in the neighbourhood of Akihabara in Tokyo, the esoteric Buddhism of Tibet, a law firm located in the Lujiazui Financial Center of Shanghai, and my experience of rock music when I was little. These seemingly unrelated elements, slices of different eras, are essentially the same thing. If we firmly believe that the East and the West, the past and the present, Paris Fashion Week and Shanghai Fashion Week are different, then we would not find the truth.”
Speaking on how he hopes to find this truth he talks about, Zhe leaves us with a heartfelt sentiment; “As a designer, Sankuanz is the opportunity to materialise my inspirations. As a human, Sankuanz is my method to explore the truth of this world. I hope that these two will converge in some future, that my inspirations become the truth of this world.”
Photography by Kin Chan.
