工作室探访：Zane Li 如何在唐人街的朴素空间打造获奖品牌 Lii

Behind designer Zane Li’s desk is an oversized whiteboard with every look from his spring 2027 collection neatly pinned up in orderly rows. “Every time I start a new collection, I always put the past collection behind me because I want to have an extension of ideas from the past season, and then see what we can do new,” he says. “Especially right now, we’re at the kind of inspiration-gathering and silhouette-designing phase.”

We’re at the Chinatown office and studio for his label Lii, located along a particularly trendy stretch of dingy Canal Street. It’s a surprisingly small, modest space considering how much the 26-year-old Li has captured the attention of the fashion industry in the three short years he’s been running his business. Just this year, he has taken home both the LVMH Karl Lagerfeld Prize for Innovation and the top honor at the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, and was also nominated for the CFDA Award for Emerging Designer of the Year.

The third-floor space is essentially a small white-walled square with high ceilings and three windows looking onto a balcony that faces an interior airshaft. On one wall is a vintage-style sink, and at the center of the room is a Donald Judd-ish birch table from the popular furniture shop Lichen in Ridgewood, Brooklyn. Directly across is a floor-to-ceiling industrial rod set-up stuffed with brightly-colored samples, some in plastic coverings.

Li’s desk is spare and tidy—an orange stapler and tape dispenser, a blue square of Post-Its, a paper cup of coffee, and a rectangular box of Chinese cigarettes. In some ways, it evokes his own work—familiar American sportswear shapes distilled into geometric forms and rendered in cheery Crayola hues of pink, red, powder blue, and kelly green. “Lii is about making familiar things unfamiliar, in a certain way—through fabrics, through colors,” Li says. “We want to take certain shapes into people’s real life and keep the volume, keep the look, but make the garment practical and make it accessible for the wearer.”

Art and photography are frequent starting points, and next to his desk is a baker’s rack stuffed with thick picture books. Not far from his laptop are printouts of pictures and a binder filled with fabrics. “We’re trying to see what kind of combo or what kind of formula looks good visually,” he says. “And from there I’ll start patterning, I’ll start designing, which is a personal and abstract process, I will say, because it’s not really ... I try not to start a collection from a garment. I kind of always try to start collections from either a piece of Ellsworth Kelly work, a piece of installation art, a Balenciaga gown.”

Li lives just a few blocks away—he measures the time it takes for him to get from the studio to his home not in distance or in traditional markers of time, but in “half-ciggies.” “I can’t even finish a cigarette walking from here to my apartment,” he says. He splits his time between here, where the clothes are designed; China, where they are manufactured; and Paris, where his press and sales teams are located. He starts his days around 9 or 10 am, grabbing orange juice at the deli downstairs to drink while checking emails and dealing with urgent press or sales matters. Then he’ll go out and get lunch from a local spot, grab a coffee, and start the design part of his day, which often can stretch to 2 am, to stay in touch with his partners in China.

Li pulls a Rineke Dijkstra book of photography from his crowded shelf as an example of a source of inspiration he returns to. “Her narrative about people, about what you can see from an image, and what their moods and emotions are, is really strong,” he says. “And I tend to want my garment, my design or idea, to evoke the same feeling. So, sometimes if I feel bored or if I don’t feel like what I want to do, then I’ll look at this book, and it gives me an instant hit—and then we’ll start from there.”

Li pulls off a three-tiered, asymmetrical skirt made from a spongy scuba fabric as an example of a recent design he’s particularly proud of. “It’s quite comfortable to wear, but, also, has this supportive shape thanks to the fabric. And we just decided to make a paneled skirt with darts that’s feminine, but I think the material made it look sporty as well.” He also pulls out an oversized, color-blocked polo shirt with hanging fabric off the sleeves. “We always try to explore ideas of a T-shirt because we feel like this is something so practical and so easy, but there’s a lot of possibilities in it,” he says. “I like the shape and having a graphic-ness on the body. We tested 10 different prototypes—about what kind of proportion, how long the strings should be to make the garment look balanced, and so on. It’s kind of fun. It’s kind of like you’re drawing squares or drawing just circles on the paper, and you’re trying to find the perfect, the most balanced circle on the paper.”

“It’s kind of like the practice of that,” he continued. “Which is really flat, and I really enjoy the transformation from that flat pattern into something that people wear on the body, and feels quite three-dimensional.”

It’s a marvel to think that Li has built so much from such a small space in such a short time. Currently, he is the only full-time employee—his husband, the stylist Jason Rider, is heavily involved but has his own career, while his studio and production managers are still freelance. Li says he plans to use the winnings from his recent prizes to help build out a more robust team. There is one silent team member keeping watch in the corner: a dummy mannequin, usually used for draping. Li mostly designs on his computer, so she’s more of a mascot. “She’s my good luck charm,” Li says, giving her a hug. “She brings me comfort.”