Le-Fool.com | Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo SS25

YueQi Qi’s “Gilded Speed” Is A Romance Between The New And Old

“Reject modernity, embrace tradition” …but why not both? Nostalgia for yesteryear’s craftsmanship cloaks everything from the grand architecture of the gilded age to a designer’s first dresses, whose humble beginnings were found within a jar of glass beads at her mother’s kitchen table in Guangzhou, China. YueQi Qi showed her eponymous label’s spring/summer 2025 collection at Rakuten fashion week with the kind of attention to detail one would expect to see at couture week. However, the CSM graduate, who went on to create for Chanel, Dior, Givenchy and Balenciaga before starting her own brand, has no interest in waging wars against her Chinese counterparts who opt to use mass-manufacturing to scale their businesses. YueQi Qi’s mission is something much more personal than the subjective nature of fast fashion: the exploration of China’s long history of intricate and delicate design.

YueQi Qi’s collection “Gilded Speed” is illustrated by the elaborate and time-consuming nature of wrought iron compared with the economic functionality of mass-produced grid iron, a parallel to the contrasting themes of couture and athleisurism found in her latest designs. Her muse: citizens exiled in public, unchained to the bounds of a single, society-approved aesthetic. YueQi Qi’s message, with her sequined jerseys, corsets paired with track pants, and an electric blue Adidas two-piece set married with generous clippings of delicate lace, is loud and clear: there is no one right way to fashion.

Courtesy of YueQi Qi

After a period of stifled creativity by China’s industrial revolution, which focused only on fast and cheap production, new wave designers like YueQi Qi have the privilege of choice to do whatever they want. Why use lace only as trim when entire cascades of it create a free-flowing blouse? Why not bras made of beads, charms with the character “爱” (love) sprinkled about, UGGs laser-cut and painted into an entirely new identity?

Courtesy of YueQi Qi

YueQi Qi’s co-opting of mass-produced brands like Adidas and UGGs known for utility paired with her slow, handcrafted techniques shows she isn’t snubbing one world for the other. Wrought iron has purpose just as grid iron does. Her liberal use of tangled headphones fashioned into belts, pendants, and other adornments acknowledges that what is coveted, cutting-edge technology one day easily becomes landfill the next. What separates the two is simply the abstract nature of time.

Courtesy of YueQi Qi

“Gilded Speed” is as much the past as it is the future, and YueQi Qi’s enmeshment of both, tied together by her signature heart-shaped motifs, demonstrates that one cannot exist without the other. Her final look is a beautifully and intricately beaded headpiece reminiscent of something found either in vintage Teowchew operas beloved by Chinese grandmothers or on Faye Wong in Wong Kar Wai’s futuristic film 2046… or better yet, why not both?

Courtesy of YueQi Qi

To view all looks from the runway show visit le-fool.com