Lii Spring 2025 Ready-to-Wear

Looking at the images of Lii’s spring 2025 collection, you might be surprised to learn the inspiration was Michael Haneke movies. “The characters are in a very formal or very intense space, but then somehow there’s a breakthrough or a break point that basically becomes the plot of the movie,” designer Zane Li said in the Chinatown studio where he showed his collection. “I’m really attracted by the intensity of people in a formal location or in a formal space, so I thought, Okay, let’s think about how to undo eveningwear.” The look book opened with a sort of bandeau-cape, which is Li’s version of the classic fur shrug. Except in this case, he took the shape of a T-shirt and connected the sleeves to wrap around the body. It might sound like a piece of clothing that is “not functional,” but the minute you slip it on, it forces you to adapt the sort of formal stance of wearing a shrug, and then suddenly it all clicks—it’s the same as balancing a pashmina about your arms as you walk around a dinner party, arms extended in perpetual glamour.