Lii Spring 2027: Retro Futurism

by · WWD
Lii Spring 2027 ready-to-wear collection at New York Fashion Week.Rodin Banica/WWD

Designer Zane Li might only have three years in business under his belt with his women’s and men’s brand Lii, but he’s quickly become a star to watch for his vibrant, poppy colors and avant-garde silhouettes that mix technical sport and minimalist, geometric futurism with commercial wearability.

The 25-year-old designer, a New York-based FIT graduate from China, was awarded the Ready to Wear award at the Fashion Trust U.S. 2026 Awards in April; last week was named the LVMH Prize runner-up, taking home the Karl Lagerfeld Special Jury Prize, and is currently both a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist and a nominee for the CFDA’s emerging designer of the year.

“It’s quite surreal; it was a good feeling,” Li said of winning the Lagerfeld Prize. His spring collection, which hit the runway in New York on Monday afternoon, was actually created in just three weeks in China earlier this summer ahead of the event.

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“This collection is a callback and imagination for the future,” Li said, digging into his small archive to see what still works, and what doesn’t, while peppering in newness. A few examples? Shorts made up of stacked flat square silhouettes, tacked together at the very bottom, as if something got caught in between the legs, and askew tanks layered over T-shirts with open backs, paired with color-blocked cocktail skirts with the same effect.

The collection actually started with American singer Brenda Lee’s ’60s ballad “Emotion.”

“I was listening to NTS Radio, specifically a hardcore techno track, and in the middle the song came on. I thought, ‘What is this beautiful song?’ I almost cried because it’s so emotional,” he said.

After learning more about the song, Lii started questioning, “Do you have to have lived to feel all of these emotions or are the emotions that you feel throughout the moment true to you?” So the collection became about the exploration of the tensions between girlhood and womanhood, he said.

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Panels were a big focus — outside of his vibrant, bicolored gowns, with sweeping, geometric trains that connected hems to back bodices (there were perhaps a few too many). The retro idea resonated stronger via superb colorful red and purple open-back, rectangular aprons atop teal and baby blue minis.

The idea of making the familiar seem unfamiliar continued with technical nylon anorak layers that expanded beyond outerwear into hoods, chopped off and worn around the neck atop little black and white cocktail dresses with deep V cuts at their fronts and backs. Or they turned into tube tops connected to color-contrasting miniskirts, which could also be scrunched down “like a waist backpack,” he said. These added to the sportiness through his ongoing show sponsorship with Nike, as seen in singular leg “tights” made up of sewn-together soccer socks.

“Every season you have to grow as a brand, of course everything is going to land in merchandising, and it’s about how you survive,” Li said. “That’s the basis of how you keep designing and creating, so it’s a balance and every season it’s a pain. But trying to find a joy in the pain and doing something creative is always the joy out of it.”