Alianna Liu's AW2020 Collection features tailoring along with puzzle game-inspired motifs

Although Paris-based designer Alianna Liu started her eponymous label only in 2018, her Autumn/Winter 2020 collection shows maturity and an understanding of what women want to wear everyday: well-made high quality designs.  She combines creativity with ingenuity with good easy-to-wear style.

Describing that at the heart of her collection is Alianna herself, she draws inspiration from fairy tales, emphasizing “our collective desire to remain children forever, even well into adulthood,” she said.  But the end result is very grown-up indeed.

Alianna’s new collection is very wearable, from school-girl suitings to knit tops, cardigans, blouses and billowing tiered skirts to tailored pant-suits with oversized drop-shoulder jackets and matching trousers, and long coats, as well as flattering cape-like jackets and sweaters.  

Alianna says she looks to the ordinary objects and events in life, seeing the extraordinary in the everyday.  Her new Autumn/Winter 2020 collection has been inspired by the puzzle game Tetris, explains the designer, based on her passion for video games by featuring a mix of cubism and pixel art, she created the prints, composed of tetrominoes and other motifs which were hand-drawn by designer.   Note the puzzle game-inspired embroidered motifs to the Napoleonic era-inspired collars, and highlights of silver thread, beads, and sequins.

The fabrics are from France and Italy.  She uses organdie, silk, satin, and velvet for the empire and mermaid flared dress, extolling the female shape. There is virgin wool for the oversize coat as well as cotton for comfort and ease.

 “Working from the heart is the key to being a designer,” Alianna explains. “Thanks to my world travel experience, I am able to draw beauty from common life. I want my clients to look at what I have done and to feel what I feel.” In all her works, there is a boldness of colour and a uniqueness of thought, all tapered with her undeniable honesty, which is core to her philosophy as a designer.

After traveling the world, Alianna decided to follow her dream of becoming a designer, so she enrolled in the famous ESMOD Paris to study fashion design, patterning, and embroidery.

She presented her first capsule collection in Paris in 2018.

Leading international textile trade fairs affected by Covid-19 ourbreaks report big drop in visitor numbers

The global fashion industry was faced with challenging times even prior to the coronavirus outbreak as “winds of change” are reportedly sweeping across many markets, seeing slower growth and declining consumer confidence, while retailers and brands are under pressure to embrace digital and addressing sustainability.

Premiere Vision Paris - February 2020

With the continual escalation of the outbreak, the multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide is compounded by supply chain issues and weak demand, as many businesses and companies in a wide range of industries currently are dependent on China as both a manufacturing base and for its billion-plus-consumer market.  

Premiere Vision Paris - February 2020

While more and more international trade events for luxury items, fashion and textile industries have now announced their cancellation for this year, those that managed to stage just before the Covid-19 outbreak took hold in Italy have reported big drop in visitor and participation numbers in their February 2020 events.

Leading international trade fairs held in Paris, namely Premiere Vision and Texworld and their co-events, have seen substantial drop in attendance figures.

In the previous week, PV Paris which covers a wide array of textile, fabrics, design, yarns, leather, accessories and garment production, reported that it was visited by 44 414 international buyers and professionals to their February 2020 edition, a drop of more than 20% compared to the February 2019 show, due to travel bans from many countries and areas greatly affected by the Coronavirus, explained the organisers.

Now Messe Frankfurt France has revealed a dramatic drop of 49% in footfall for their group of six major trade fairs covering fabrics and materials, garment production, textile innovation, clothing and accessories, registering 7109 visitors compared with the previous year.  

Texworld - February 2020, Paris

Michael Scherpe, President of Messe Frankfurt France, remarked in a statement that the exceptional circumstances prevented almost 50% of Chinese exhibitors from leaving their country to come to Paris. In some cases, the European agents of these Chinese companies were able to present the Chinese’s collections on the stands.  


The results in terms of the number of discussions and amount of business reported by participants showed that the organisers got things right in staying the course and in continuing with all the events once they had consulted with the French health authorities, said the organisers, and that despite it all, their main Chinese partners have signalled their readiness to renew their confidence in the fair by confirming that they will certainly be back in September.

Texworld - February 2020, Paris

“As always, the players in this dynamic market will demonstrate their resilience and professionalism. Even if buyers decide to put alternative sourcing routes in place on a temporary basis in order to guarantee supplies, they will want to resume their usual routes quickly. For this reason, one can already imagine that the September session will be very good for business" said Mr. Scherpe.
Both fairs were particularly affected by their Chinese customers, as China is the epicentre of the Covid-19 virus, and its status as the key supplier of parts and textile products to the world’s industries has made it a most crucial link in the world’s economy,  But as life in some parts of the country has come to a stand-still due to the outbreak, the world’s reliance on China may now ironically make it the weakest link in the supply chain.

Reported in a recent article in Time magazine in March, Pierre Haren, CEO of fintech start-up Causality Link, believes consumers may soon start to see less variety on store shelves as companies concentrate their available production on products they already know to be best-sellers, and predicts there could be supply shortages as early as mid-March.

Premiere Vision Paris - Feburary 2020

Like many other industries, the fashion world has long embraced China as a source of cheap manufacturing — the country is by far the world’s largest producer of textiles, and it produces many of the other elements that go into clothes, from buttons to zippers to thread. “The vast majority of certain products are only done in China,” says Gary A. Wassner, the CEO of Hildun Corporation and the chairman of Interluxe. “We became very dependent, and we allowed it to happen because it was cost-efficient, but that’s not the only thing to consider.”

The fashion industry and other sectors are also facing big challenges from the other end of the production chain: consumer demand. Pauline Brown, the former chairman of North America at LVMH, says the luxury market is already starting to see a “fairly severe” effect due to the virus, especially as Chinese shoppers stop traveling to make big-ticket purchases in cities like New York and Paris. Brown says that, as consumers become focused on their health, they’re less likely to shop for luxury goods, as reported in Time.

HUMAN TOUCH exhibition at Sotheby's in London

The HUMAN TOUCH exhibition at Sotheby's held in early March showcased the incredible connection between designers and makers.

Framed wall hanging above: Art Makes People Powerful, 2019, is designed by Bob and Roberta Smith

Dimensions: 138 by 138cm

The piece of canvaswork (also known as needlepoint) was stitched in one prison by a single stitcher who used crewel wool to stitch in basketweave tent stite, a diagonal stitch which is used for its strength, evenness and structure.

HUMAN TOUCH was a ground-breaking collaboration between eight international contemporary artists and Fine Cell Work a charity that trains and works with prisoners in Britain, transferring their cells into embroidery workshops.

This unique project joining celebrated artists with stitchers in prison cells resulted in eight unique works of art for the exhibition at Sotheby's 26th February to 3rd March 2020 and sold by Fine Cell  Work.

The contemporary artists involved in this project were Ai Weiwei, Idris Khan, Carolina Mazzolari, Annie Morris, Cornelia Parker, Bob and Roberta Smith, Wolfgang Tillmans and Francis Upritchard.

Francis Upritchard's The Artists, Paravent with upholstered silk panels (176 x 149 cm)

The colour images were screen-printed onto handwoven silk and then hand-embroidered using stranded cotton in a wide selection of shades.  The stitches were imspired by the Bayeux Tapestry (technically an embroidery, not a tapestry) and include laid work, stem stitch, satin stich, couching, back stitch, raised chain band, detached chain stitch, French knots, buttonhole bars and double knot stitch.  The embroidered silk was professionally upholstered into the paravent, which was designed and constructed by Martino Gamper.

British designer Cath Kidston, Chair of Human Touch and Trustee of Fine Cell Work said in the programme introduction that the pieces were started from discussions with each artist with the understanding of the restrictions of stitching in prison.  The artists selected their base cloths and small sections were sent into some of the cell groups in prison to be sampled based on their specifications.  The artists then made recommendations or changes before each work was put into full production in prisons across the country.  As the work returned from prison, the emotional connection between the artists and the stitchers became obvious and can be seen through the craftsmanship.  

Ai Weiwei's piece was a quilt called Odyssey.

The monochrome piece consists of 28 embroidered panels, plus plan panels joined together in a variation of a Log cabin style quilt.  The topic is powerful, as it is about refugees, about Human Flow, according to the artist.  The embroidered panels were digitally printed and then stitched in stranded cotton using a variety of different stitches (stem, chain, open chain, detached chain, back and whipped back stitch plus French knots).

Ai Weiwei was so impressed with the results that he wrote personally to each of the 13 stitchers who worked on his piece to thank them for their contribution.

Idris Khan was so impressed with the stitcher's work that he chose to embroider his signature rather than marking with pen.

His design is called Numbers - a hand-sewn photograph presented as a framed wall-hanging of 180 x 180 cm.  The design was digitally printed on heavy linen with embroidered embellishments.

A single stitcher used a combination of darning stitch, Kantha stitch, seeding and irregular running stitch.

He also used black stranded and perle cotton in different weights to convey the subtle variations in shade and line.

All proceeds from the sale of the work were to go directly to the Fine Cell  Work, enabling the charity to provide more creative, paid needlework to the stitchers and enable them to build independent crime-free lives.

Sotheby's is located 34-35 New Bond Street, London W1S 2RT, UK

Photos by Lucia Carpio.