Introduction
Ziggy Chen, born Chen Xiang in Wuhan in 1969, is a Chinese fashion designer and the founder of his Shanghai-based eponymous label. He studied arts and crafts with a specialisation in fashion design at China Textile University, now Donghua University, and taught textile design there after graduating in 1994. In 1999 he founded Shanghai Shiyi Co., Ltd., which launched the commercial label Decoster the following year.
Chen introduced Decoster Concept in 2011 as a more personal design project, then renamed it Ziggy Chen as the work entered the European market in 2012. His collections combine historical Chinese material culture, European tailoring and extensive fabric treatment. Footwear joined the collection for Autumn/Winter 2022 and womenswear followed for Spring/Summer 2023, extending a practice built around comfort, layered proportion and the physical memory of textiles.
Design ethos
Chen begins with fabric and internal construction. Natural fibres are dyed, washed, printed and abraded until their surfaces suggest time, weather and repeated handling. Jackets and coats retain the logic of classical tailoring while visible seams, shifted pockets and uneven edges interrupt their expected order.
His references range from early twentieth-century Shanghai street photography to Song Dynasty painting and Jiangnan wooden architecture. These sources inform muted colour, elongated volume and the meeting of two-dimensional robe construction with European tailoring. The clothes avoid overt display, concentrating on how layers settle around the body and become more personal through use.
Disclaimer
Career history
2022
The atelier introduced footwear built on its own lasts and tested womenswear through a pre-season capsule. Spring/Summer 2023 formalised womenswear on the runway, adding skirts, dresses and wrap forms without separating them from the menswear line’s material and proportional system.
2012
The project adopted the Ziggy Chen name as it entered European showrooms and the Paris market. Menswear became the foundation of a continuous founder-led practice built around natural fibres, layered tailoring and controlled textile ageing.
2011
Decoster Concept separated Chen’s personal work from the company’s established commercial line. Its Spring/Summer 2012 presentation introduced the historical layering, military restraint and Taoist duality that would continue under the Ziggy Chen name.
1999
Chen founded Shanghai Shiyi Co., Ltd. and developed Decoster for the Chinese commercial market. The business gave him two decades of production and retail experience before he separated a more personal design language from the established label.
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