Feature: Chinese designer Miao Ran makes applauded debut at Milan fashion week

Eclectic elegance, genderless esthetic and research of materials marked the debut show of Chinese designer Miao Ran, who presented his spring summer 2017 collection here at the Milan menswear fashion week on Saturday.

Colorful embroideries depicting creatures swimming on white canvas were the only decorative elements of Miao Ran's creations, which focused on a clean design in bold volumes with a play of light and shadow. The geometric cuts adapted to the shape of the body to give them a genderless appeal.

"I think that fashion today bears too many heavy contents and social messages. Instead what I would like to do is just re-bring fashion back to the body, the body of people," Miao Ran told Xinhua shortly after the show. In fact fashion is made not for male bodies of female bodies, but for human bodies, for persons, he elaborated.

"For the textures of this collection I made a lot of research," the designer went on saying referring to the razor-precise cuts from rough denim, featherlight linen, white poplin and pure sandwashed silk to cotton mixed with a metallic thread to keep the creases, and weaved raffia.

Long coats in thick canvas were paired with fluid trousers, bomber jackets had a loose-fit, and white shirts long well below the waist were matched with wide-legged pants. "Many people ask me what the consumer target of my collection is, but in fact I have no target. Any person who feels self-confident, who knows who she or he is, can wear my clothes," Miao Ran explained to Xinhua.

"When I wear Miao Ran's creations I have the feeling that I am kind of free in my movements," one of the show's models, known as Roger B., told Xinhua. "I feel comfortable and natural. More simply, I can say that I feel like myself," he said.

Born in north China's Shanxi Province in 1987, Miao Ran after fashion studies in his home country decided to move to the Italian fashion capital. In Milan he earned a degree in fashion design at the Politecnico di Milano university, and later a master's from the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano (NABA), the largest private academy in Italy, where he also was a fashion teacher for two years.

Strong of important and extensive experience, Miao Ran last May was unveiled as the next talent designer to present his collection as a guest of Giorgio Armani's Theatre during the June fashion week.

"I find this collection very authentic, cross-cultural and of a high quality. I think it is a reflection of Miao Ran's meeting with different cultures and mentors in his life," Marc Ledermann, CEO of Laureate Design Italy, a network of institutions of which NABA is part, told Xinhua on the sidelines of the show.

"Miao Ran was a very visible talent already from the beginning," Ledermann went on saying. Also, he was a very fine personality, respectful of others and attentive to details, a very beautiful mind," he added recalling the times when Miao Ran was a student at NABA.

Other viewers told Xinhua they found the debut amazing. "He is a true master. He has a new vision of elegance and sophistication," said a Russian fashion journalist, Liuba Popova. "The collection expresses a very profound point of view on clothes and on the human body," she added.

The spring summer 2017 edition of the menswear fashion week opened on Friday and will run until Tuesday with 37 shows including established fashion houses but also increasingly young and international designers. Endit