These days a myriad of collections shown the world over claim to have “concept,” but few of those concepts truly hold water. Australian-bred Chinese designer Yang Li stands indubitably among the designers throwing their weight behind something more than pretty storytelling. Grounded in a postmodern fashion landscape, Li’s quietly dramatic designs are nuanced with culture: His sonic and filmic references lean towards the darker side of the Western world’s avant-garde, yet his hand is light. Today in Paris he entranced his audience with hypnotic sound bites from Placebo, the sound track of The Hours, and Lars von Trier’s Europa—in a layered audio collage that, like his clothes, reflected the young designer’s punk passions with gusto.

Four shows into his short career and Li’s codes are set in stone—his sleek way with a leather Perfecto, a deconstructed ball gown, and nipped tailoring have garnered him top stockists the world over—and spring’s offering felt like a fruitful full circle. Placed atop a genius Cuban-heeled brogue and fluted trousers, Li’s silhouettes explored a gossamer-light study of silk overlay, as coats and trim shifts in polished denim, static jacquard, or featherweight calfskin sprouted up on organza swatches or satin pleats, disrupting their perfect lines with raw and abstract volumes.

Speaking volumes of a different kind, however, were the text studies that trailed down jersey tees, proclaiming fatalist poetry like “nothing short of a total riot, nothing short of a total love.” Li mapped those out in New York City this summer with musician and artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV fame, continuing a dialogue between the pair that, from afar, seems akin to disparate universes colliding. Rather, it is proof of our collective conscious churning out modern-day poetry for those willing to hear, read, and wear it.

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