Entitled Dual Adsorption, Li Gong’s latest 8ON8 collection was subject to its own quixotic narrative framework that at first seemed almost too random to parse. As the designer told it afterwards, that story saw a traveler protagonist arrive at a mysterious garden in which a strange species of double headed and double shelled snail flourished. He said this story was the result of “ideas flashing across my mind” and added: “I always try to show some surreal feeling based on reality.”
Gong was speaking after the show while presenting a space that was his entry in a creative direction competition being held during this Shanghai Fashion Week. It presented a sort of cabin in which a bed took pride of place, surrounded by rails of this collection’s garments, as well as what Gong called “nonsense pieces”: speakers in mushroom-shaped fabric cladding, and wooden trays and bowls set about roller skate wheels.
Seeing this space really helped frame the fashion show he’d shown before it. It suggested that the almost arbitrary eclecticism of Gong’s garments are subject to a kind of Lewis Carroll logic: absurdism and naivety as a strategy for bypassing elements of convention. Flying under that banner, the stitch-held hyper-sized turn-ups on many pants, or the aura-like fringe of faux fur around the shoulder and arms of a leather blouson hit as gestures designed to be disarmingly strange. The argyle waistcoats that were padded and inflated to vaguely resemble the snail’s protective shell also resembled lifejackets.
Waistcoats and shirting with incorporated gorpcore gusset pockets, some superfine Asics collab sneakers, jersey-cut garden gnome hats, check shirting and shorts overlaid with leopard print, pannier skirts worn under outerwear specially vented to let the panniers protrude, a tonal floral jacquard parka, and a quarter zip framed with a lattice of knit collection-icon emojis were further elements in this mixed-up and vaguely Mario-reminiscent aesthetic universe. A couple of sweaters featured more argyle patterning, but with the furniture of lines and diamonds so radically rearranged it bore almost no relationship with the controlling logic of the original.
At Gong’s finale, the models came out as Leroy Gomez sang over the sound system. “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh, Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.” Evasion through misunderstanding seemed part of the intention at this 8ON8 show.
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