The Beijing-based designer Sean Suen found an interesting middle ground between classical music and Chinese folklore for his spring 2026 show at the Cujas Library in Paris.
The designer’s usual clean aesthetic with a touch of sci-fi influence got vaguely tangled up with Debussy’s daydream piano solo “Rêverie,” as well as Ning Caichen, a scholar-turned-debt collector most famously portrayed by the late Leslie Cheung in the 1987 cult film “A Chinese Ghost Story,” which was adapted from a chapter in “Liaozhai,” a collection of classical tales from the Qing Dynasty.
The elongated proportions, the exaggerated shawl lapels, the square-toe shoes, and the dramatic rolled-up hats might come off as an edgy take on traditional men’s tailoring to the Western audience, but a Sinophile would know all these are based on Ning’s scholar outfit in the movie, in which he fell for a beautiful ghost who at one point wanted him dead.
Debussy came into play in the form of a medium — a dream, maybe — that enabled Suen to be free from any constraints during collection development, as he attempted to visualize abstract melodies via the language of clothing.
The dream seemed quite an adventure, as results seen between the bookshelves in the library were a mix of neatly tailored suits, treated leather jackets, bright knits, as well as fun items like cocoon-shaped shorts, wrap skirts with letter motifs, and scarves worn as capes.
