Interview with Susan Fang: on the fashion designer's flowy and colourful looks that evoke a pastoral innocence, and her Dolce & Gabbana collaboration at Milan Fashion Week

South China Morning Post

14-04-2025

In an industry as cutthroat as fashion, where profit margins take precedence over personality and greed often wins out over generosity, Susan Fang – both the designer and her eponymous brand – feels like a breath of fresh air. Long fascinated by her ethereal designs, which I can only describe as looking and feeling like billowy, colourful cotton candy sculptures come to life, I'm pleased to find Fang is equally effusive, energetic and bubbly in person when we catch up during her recent visit to Hong Kong with Cocktail Select Shop, a bohemian-esque boutique with locations across the city.
A sample of Susan Fang's billowy, cotton candy-esque designs. Photo: Handout
'Actually a lot of the brands here, I also like myself,' Fang muses in the middle of Cocktail's Pacific Place store, surrounded by dozens of her floral fairy-tale creations – a fitting setting for the woman who has infused fresh new magic into the term boho chic. 'Even as a student, I've always liked to go to really selective shops that show craft – brands that have a lot of storytelling and emotion. It's not about luxury as a status.'
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Storytelling and emotion, inspired by the designer's immediate surroundings growing up – a vast array of cultural influences acquired across years spent everywhere from the United States to the United Kingdom, Canada and mainland China – inform the nomadic, nymphlike beauty which the Susan Fang brand has become so well-known for. A graduate of Central Saint Martins, Fang launched her eponymous brand in 2017 and was shortlisted for the
LVMH Prize a mere two years later. Now based in London, the designer travels frequently to Shanghai, where she also staged regular runway shows before making her
Milan Fashion Week debut earlier this year, supported by Dolce & Gabbana's young designers programme – alumni of which include talented contemporaries like Tomo Koizumi and Sohee Park of Miss Sohee.
A model wears a striped knit top and a gauzy, flowerlike skirt by Susan Fang. Photo: Handout
'We really wanted to show the story that's true to our hearts,' Fang says of the brand's autumn/winter 2025 collection, which was inspired by the invisible element of air in nature – the designer's signature 'air-weave and 'air-whirl' techniques minimise waste by using small strips of fabric to create her voluminous silhouettes – juxtaposed with the similarly intangible quality of our memories. Several stand-out looks, including one showstopping rainbow number which encapsulates the lightness and lightweight airiness of the brand, played on this motif by floating down the runway in a mesmerising blur or appearing suspended in mid-air.
Susan Fang made her Milan Fashion Week debut earlier this year through Dolce & Gabbana's young designers programme. Photo: Dolce & Gabbana
'Even in this luxury world, we can still connect with something that's very pure,' says Fang, who certainly speaks with a kind of purity and childlike innocence which feels enviable. It's that exact same play on purity – of fashion, fabrics, the essence of nature and human nature – which has quietly fuelled her meteoric rise over the years.
'Our Milan show was about the happiness of memories that creates us,' the designer says of the collection's various prints, which were recreations of her mother's own paintings. 'So we connected with my mom's memories, Chinese arts and cultural memories. It's about embracing the moment and appreciating all the memories in our past from our parents or people we love that become a powerful part of us.'
Susan Fang's Milan show was inspired by the theme of memories. Photo: Dolce & Gabbana
In that sense, Fang's heritage serves as more than just fodder for future collections – it's an invisible string which firmly establishes the designer's own place in the pantheon of her culture and the longer lineage of artists who have preceded her. Like dreams passed down from generation to generation, Fang's designs are living proof that the simplest things are often the most difficult to achieve; her deceivingly carefree creations are far from effortless, but instead testament to the technical know-how and artistry she's inherited and built upon.