Shushu/Tong

Shushu/Tong was founded in 2015 in Shanghai by Chinese designer duo Liushu Lei and Yutong Jiang, both London College of Fashion graduates who launched the brand specifically focused on what they described as 'a deliberately-feminine contemporary womenswear vocabulary that drew explicitly on the visual culture of 1960s-1970s Shanghai-jazz-club aesthetic and contemporary Chinese-youth-feminine sensibility.' The brand's foundational thesis was specific: produce a contemporary womenswear vocabulary that read as authentically rooted in contemporary Chinese-feminine youth culture rather than as 'oriental-export' product designed for Western consumption. The Shushu/Tong vocabulary settled around several recurring elements: hand-printed silk-and-cotton dresses with deliberately-feminine pre-1970s Shanghai-aesthetic motifs (the brand's defining product category), soft-shouldered cotton-and-linen blouses with deliberately-feminine ruffle-and-pleat detailing, deconstructed jersey separates referencing 1960s Chinese-cinema costume traditions, hand-knitted Shanghai-aesthetic sweaters, and a colour palette anchored to washed-pink, oxblood, ecru, soft-yellow, washed-navy, plus the brand's recurring use of saturated red, pearl-white, and the iconic Shanghai-jazz-club palette tones. The brand has presented at Shanghai Fashion Week each season since 2017. The brand is independent and held by Lei and Jiang. Shushu/Tong operates flagship retail in Shanghai (Anfu Road — the brand's home neighbourhood) plus international wholesale through SSENSE, MATCHES, MR PORTER, Net-a-Porter, Dover Street Market, Lane Crawford, Boontheshop, the Webster, and a curated set of contemporary-luxury-womenswear specialty retailers globally. The brand has been one of the most quietly successful post-2015 Shanghai-anchored contemporary-feminine womenswear brands, with the deliberately-Shanghai-feminine-culture positioning specifically anchoring the brand inside the contemporary 'Chinese-feminine-luxury' conversation.