SUSAN FANG SS27: Air • Illusion
At the Barbican Centre Lakeside, perception was part of the show before the first look appeared at Susan Fang. Silver circles floated above the water, catching fragments of the brutalist architecture, while the invitation itself changed depending on how it was held. At one angle, it revealed the SUSAN FANG four-leaf clover monogram. Turn it, and the image became a heart.
It was an appropriately deliberate introduction to Air • Illusion, SUSAN FANG’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection, exploring fantasy, perception and love through traditional Chinese craft, technology and experimental form.
The starting point was M. Butterfly, the story inspired by real events that follows French diplomat René Gallimard and Chinese opera singer Song Liling. After twenty years, Gallimard discovers that the woman he loves is a man and a spy. For Susan Fang, however, the beauty of the story lies in the distinction between illusion and emotion. The image Gallimard loved was false, but the love itself was real.
That tension became the foundation of the collection, expressed through transparency, distortion, colour and fractured forms. The qipao was reworked into a transparent bubble silhouette, referencing Song Liling’s fabricated femininity and the idealised woman existing in Gallimard’s imagination. A bubble Beijing opera headpiece decorated with resin lilies extended the idea into something almost dreamlike.
Traditional Chinese porcelain became another recurring reference. Broken porcelain was translated into a ghostly air-painting effect, with colour and feathers embroidered between layers of clear organza, while the signature air flowers borrowed their palette from traditional ceramics. Crochet knitwear followed in blue and white, alongside soft mint and peach.
Prints played with the same idea of looking closer. Hand-drawn motifs inspired by Chinese porcelain painting were combined with a digital garden in the colours of traditional ceramics and Chinese dress. Up close, the garden revealed itself as ASCII characters, letters and numbers. The print was created by Orelio De Jonghe, Susan Fang’s husband, former Dyson industrial designer and Head of 3D Design and Accessories.
The brand’s Air-Puzzle technique brought geometry into the clothes, interlocking shapes and colours like a jigsaw to create three-dimensional planes of colour. Broken porcelain was repainted and reset into accessories, while fractured jade was joined with gold to create multicoloured flower jewellery. Rather than concealing the damage, Fang turned the fracture into the ornament.
That relationship with heritage extended to Beijing-based Jade Master Li Ke, who has worked with jade for more than twenty years and created a series of intricate earrings for the collection. His involvement also acknowledges a craft that is becoming increasingly difficult to pass between generations.
Technology sat alongside this heritage through SUSAN FANG’s partnership with Bambu Lab. Neon lace inspired by Chinese porcelain flowers was created through 3D printing, while a sculptural pixelated flip-flop was designed to appear recognisable from one angle and distorted from another. Here, technology becomes another tool for experimentation rather than a replacement for traditional craft.
Flowers moved onto the feet through the collaboration with Crocs. Echo Blume, the first collaboration created for the new Echo Lume silhouette, made its worldwide debut on the runway ahead of its Spring 2027 launch. Metallic wildflowers, generated through SUSAN FANG’s flower system using fractal formulas found in nature and developed through 3D animation, transformed the futuristic shoe into a miniature garden. The runway heels took the floral language further with a more exuberant growth of flowers.
The Barbican proved an apt setting for a collection concerned with surfaces and what lies beneath them. This was the first fashion show staged at Lakeside, where brutalist architecture meets water, planting and open space. There was also a historical connection. The Barbican scheme was agreed in 1959, with construction continuing through the 1960s, the decade in which M. Butterfly begins.
The relationship with M. Butterfly continues beyond the runway, with SUSAN FANG designing costumes for a new production at La Monnaie / De Munt in Brussels, opening in April 2027.
Air • Illusion never treats its references literally. Chinese porcelain becomes colour, broken ceramics become embroidery, jade fractures become jewellery, flowers become algorithms, and the qipao becomes something almost weightless.
At its heart, the collection asks whether something has to be real to make the feelings surrounding it real. At the Barbican, SUSAN FANG allowed fashion, technology, heritage and illusion to exist in the same frame.
Even the reflections were part of the design.
Images courtesy of Susan Fang
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