Before designer Lu Chen founded his eponymous label LUCHEN, perhaps no one would have believed that a Chinese designer living In New York would have his first season featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's annual exhibition In America: In An Anthology of Fashion, it is hard to imagine that a fashion show can be a parade through the streets of New York.

"When you're trying something new, there's always a question mark." Chen Lu on the other end of the phone told quite calmly about his mental journey since this period of time. Over the past two years, she has taken her own brand, LUCHEN, from New York to Paris, receiving both admiring and skeptical looks along the way.

Getting to know LUCHEN is both easy and difficult: you can read about LUCHEN from video replays of New York street shows and notes from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but it's hard to see the brand on the official Fashion Week calendar, and Mr. Chen rarely gives media interviews.

In Chen Lu's impression, the visual enjoyment brought by reading fashion magazines as a child has invisibly affected her fashion road today, "When I was a child, I would secretly read fashion magazines and re-draw the images I like."

After graduating from high school, she was full of longing for New York to study fashion design at Parsons, and it was during the preparation of her graduation works that the sudden epidemic disrupted her "ambition". "Although I completed the graduation design hastily because of the epidemic, I actually prepared for a long time, but I still hope to complete it. In 2021, I picked up the idea and founded the LUCHEN brand."

Since the first season, LUCHEN's design concept has been around the seemingly grand and closely related to everyone's life, such as time, body, technology and other themes, and since then, the concept of "preserving time" is reflected in the details of the clothing, "we want to use this more material things to preserve time, all coats will have a label inside." It marks the time of completion, including every button, every zipper, it will mark the year and day of completion, just like a piece of art, it will have a final completion date."

"But on the other hand, we've been introducing a lot of technology into our designs lately, and I think these elements are everywhere, and our lives are surrounded by them, so there's no way to design without introducing these topics."

As shown in a large, screen-embedded tuxedo gown from the Spring/Summer 2022 collection, pixels are not only the visual effect that Chen Lu wants to present, but also a reflection of the current life thinking that "our visual habits have slowly begun to pixelate."

In addition, feathers are also one of the essential elements of LUCHEN's four seasons of creation so far, from the delicate and delicate dresses in the first season, to the stunning feathered headdress in the first fashion show, and the abstract feathers simulated by tulle and sequins in the last two seasons, which trace their origins back to Chen Lu's dreams. "I have been using feather elements since my sophomore or junior year, and this image related to flight is actually a relatively primitive desire of mine to create, especially the touch of scales and skin, which has a strong connection with my heart, but it is also very elusive."

"In today's world, I think time is becoming more and more uncertain, but we want to use some valuable processes to preserve its original certainty."

But for young designers, want to achieve the ideal state in the process, get outside support is not easy, "from the beginning we pay special attention to workmanship, a lot of design can not get the factory directly to do the sample, we have to set up our own workshop."

Many problems need to be solved not only behind the scenes, but also in front of the stage, many seemingly inspired moments mean to pay more efforts, patience and determination to challenge the impossible, such as the street parade show of the spring and summer series of 2023, "The original plan of the show was not on the street, but it was really because of some things in the industry that we changed our minds," I want to make my voice heard, in a relatively interesting form.

So we improvised the plan less than a month before the show, immediately re-did the research, and even gave up the display of some styles. We hope to achieve this thing that no one has done before."

In the words of Chen Lu, the design process "10% is creative, the remaining 90% is problem solving, a lot of innovative things are actually beautiful when they are imagined, but there are still a lot of painful processes when they are done."

After four seasons, LUCHEN has gradually developed a team of his own, and the production of prints and samples is completed in the studio.

As the process and concept matured, and with encouragement and advice from people in the industry, LUCHEN chose to debut in Paris at the beginning of this year to explore more different possibilities.

As the name suggests, "Demi-Couture" also reveals a clearer positioning of the brand, exploring the middle ground between traditional haute couture and ready-to-wear collections. "It's not a complete couture series, but a design that can be mass-produced. Then we will add some more ready-to-wear designs to form a more complete series."

Through 3D printing technology UV mapping, the structure of the human body is drawn, from which every element point is extracted, highlighted by beading. By connecting these seemingly abstract dots, you can get a three-dimensional human body structure, and create a visual effect that is both flat and three-dimensional with the blessing of modern technology.

Colorful tulle wrapped in a structured jacket, jacket, dress skirt, to create a hazy and mysterious feeling, showing the combination of exquisite craftsmanship and practical wear, "some of the shapes are focused on explaining the concept, but some can also be simplified under the same elements, making it a more commercial product."

The feather element has welcomed a fresh interpretation, with colorful sculpted sequins mimicking the natural pattern of feathers and embellishing the details of dresses and coats, adding more flexibility to the strong silhouette and further strengthening LUCHEN's signature design language.

The impromptu performance of the models in the show also made people bright. The male model wearing a black dress decorated with flash lights and the female model performing a colorful sequined feather dress completed an abstract interaction. Chen Lu gave the two people in front and back the role of "escape" and "surveillance", according to her setting, the models freely stretched their bodies, giving the clothes a story and plot.

According to LUCHEN's show notes for the season, "Autumn/Winter 2023 explores the vast unknown and encourages viewers to consider the possibility of finding strength and purpose in the silent chaos."

This kind of exploration and thinking is also the core of designer Chen Lu's constant review in the design process, after more than two years of trying and innovation, she confessed that her mind is more peaceful, "I think sometimes it is better to let things go naturally, even if some things do not 100% meet expectations, in fact, it is not necessarily bad."

After the Paris debut, Chen Lu and Harison, the co-founder of the brand, are still in constant contact with the factory to establish a more mature supply chain for the brand and meet the expectations of buyers and consumers who have placed high expectations on LUCHEN.

The first piece from LUCHEN's collection, "Adam with Apple," was featured In the Metropolitan Museum of Art's annual Fashion show "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" last year. Can you tell us about it before and after?

One of the curators at the time emailed us directly and said they were particularly interested in the dress, which made sense to me.

It was the last piece in the first series, showing the body in a completely unadorned state under the sagging beige tulle, and later, considering the effect of the exhibition, we made underwear inside to highlight the features of the human body.

From the first season to the latest Demi-Couture, we have made progress in the performance of the body. At the beginning, we discussed the simple human body. Now, with more and more new technologies, we also want to extract the elements of the body and think about it again.

Do you like to invite artists, creatives, milliners, sculptors and other professional roles to participate in the show, what kind of message do you want to convey?I think a show actually has many different forms of expression, if it is just a simple display of the product itself will be a bit of a waste of scene. We'll start by telling people what kind of feelings they have to show, but we'll also give them a lot of room to play, and they'll be free to show it on stage. I think the costumes, if presented in a specific order, can also bring some story.

Do these stories come from your life?I think it still has a lot to do with what I do every day, including how to express what I want to express the most, but there are often times when I am lost or very painful, and part of my psychological projection is actually a process of fighting with myself, in the process of fighting with modern technology and technological limitations.

LUCHEN's design is not very gender-specific, do you agree?First of all, we mainly do women's wear, but we don't mind putting some large silhouette styles on boys, or slightly stronger women. From the beginning, I didn't have a clear line on the gender of design.

The Spring/Summer 2023 collection is LUCHEN's first commercial collection, what is your feedback?We still connect with a lot of our favorite buyers and consumers. For a new brand, in the case that the popularity is not high, we still hope to continue to expect us to have a more mature supply chain, and better control of costs and prices.