Li-Ning on the international stage at Paris Men's Fashion Week

In China, Li-Ning is an iconic  and successful sports brand named after their star Olympian.

China's iconic sports brand Li-Ning, named after the Chinese star Olympian,

will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2020.

And now its ambition is to conquer the world, especially after a successful introduction in its home country at retailers like Lane Crawford. Li-Ning’s elevated runway collection, now in its fourth season, continues to expand its global distribution at a range of high-end retailers and specialty sneaker boutiques including KITH, SSENSE, LN-CC, Slam Jam, END Clothing, Oki-Ni, Selfridges, and END Clothing to name a few.

The sports brand has now presented for the second time at Paris Men’s Fashion Week. This season the event was in a show space inside the Lycée Turgot in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris.  Within the custom set, graphics from the collection adorned the hyper-colour, multi-layer walls; with seating arranged in a maze-like format.

Models walked the labyrinth to an eclectic Chinese soundtrack, ’90s hip hop, and abstract Jazz, revealing the collection to a front-row crowd that included world champion skier Eileen Gu, Chinese performer Ayunga, singer Can Chengyu, and Lucas Jagger, as well as Mr. Li-Ning himself, who took in the show alongside his daughter Xiaoyan.

Mr. Li-Ning at the Paris catwalk alongside his daughter Xiao-yan.

Li-Ning finds the inspiration for its latest collection in ping-pong—or simply known as table tennis in the West, the Chinese national sport that commands a fervor greater than basketball, baseball, or soccer and one in which China has won 28 of 32 Olympic gold medals since its introduction in 1988.

For Spring/Summer 2020, the simple ping-pong polo informed the design direction of the entire collection, which offers easy shapes and voluminous silhouettes cut away from the body.

For an airy look, Li-Ning has used a set of new, ultra-lightweight fabrics for an array of coats and shirts, trousers and shorts, bags and accessories and footwear. 

In its styling and coloruways, the collection fused nostalgia and futurism.

SS20 highlights include deconstructed, zip-away Mackintosh coats trimmed in contrasting piping and affixed with patches, layered paperweight anoraks in contrasting tones of khaki and yellow, oversized polo—short or long-sleeved, striped, patterned, patched, piped, open V-neck, or zip-neck with vintage-inspired circular pulls. The breezy look carried through to the women’s range: females wore long tennis dresses darted with contrast stitching, as well as zip-away track coats and waisted track dresses. And for all genders, Li-Ning reimagined its signature garment—the track suit—in a wild range of colors, materials, and techniques, each of them at home on the ping-pong courts of yesterday or today.

Across all apparel, Li-Ning made strong use of vintage-inspired graphics including repeating paddle prints, abstract collages, comic book sketches, and the critical number 11, which was assigned to Mr. Li during the 1984 Summer Olympics.