Icicle Makes Shanghai Fashion Week Debut

SHANGHAI — Icicle, the Chinese fashion label with a decade-old design studio and large stores in Paris, kickstarted the spring 2024 edition of Shanghai Fashion Week on Sunday night with the brand’s first runway show on the fashion calendar.

The collection featured print shirts; check trenches; A-line dresses in summer-ready fabrics like linen and hemp, and elegant suitings in Guandong gauze, a traditional Chinese textile made from yam juice-dyed silk. They exemplified the brand’s ethos of “sincere reverence for nature, cherishing what is given to us, kindness for others and passing down to future generations,” according to Ye Shouzeng, a former teacher at Shanghai’s top fashion design academy Dong Hua University.

Ye cofounded the brand in 1997 with his wife Tao Xiaoma, who now leads the operation of Carven alongside creative director Louise Trotter, whose feminine and elegant debut collection was widely praised by buyers. Ye took over as chief executive officer of Icicle at the beginning of 2023.

Since the beginning, the pair wanted to offer an eco-friendly, ethically minded option for women living professional urban lives, looking to their respective familial roots in the Guangdong and Fujian regions.

Natural fibers, used with their original hues or dyed with natural pigments, formed the basis for a wardrobe of quiet staples they named Icicle, using characters that loosely translate to “seed that germinates.”

“We have been keeping our distance from the mainstream fashion system. Although we have achieved some success on our own, I think now it’s about time to go back to the most classic form of showcasing, a runway show,” said Ye, who was made a knight in France’s National Order of Merit for his contribution to sustainability and artistic exchanges between China and France.

“Icicle as a brand has always favored simplicity. So the show itself is very clean. No dazzling performance or spectacle set. The only thing we added to the Xintiandi venue was the cream-colored carpet. The looks are minimalistic and understated as usual,” he added.

He compared the way Icicle creates designs to how Chinese people practice calligraphy.

”If one goes straight to cursive writing style, we’d call it amateurish. We make clothes in serious regular script style, one stroke at a time. It shows that we would stick to something for a very long time. It might look similar every season, but if you look closer, you will appreciate the accumulation of our effort and devotion.

“Generally speaking, we are a believer in the Chinese philosophy that popular things disappear fast. The sustainable ethos we advocate for is slow fashion. It means that our clothes are able to withstand the scrutiny of time. Today it looks beautiful, and two decades later, the timeless beauty remains,” he added.

It’s clear that the company is not in a rush. It’s said that it took them four years to secure Trotter to design Carven. Therefore, it’s not surprising that Icicle’s Shanghai Fashion Week debut came 26 years after the brand was founded.

In 2012, it became one of the first Chinese fashion brands to set up a designer studio overseas. Icicle picked a beautiful location in the 16th-arrondissement overlooking the church of Église Paroisse Saint-Honoré d’Eylau.

Ye said that was a move aimed at finding talents that were not available in China to support the next stage of growth of the brand at the time.

“I used to be a teacher. I am very aware of what kind of talents there are in the industry, and there was a shortage of experienced professionals in China. By chance, we worked with some foreign talents in Shanghai and felt that they were able to bring something different to the table. So we decided to proactively look for them.

“The result has been overwhelmingly positive. In a way, we managed to stay ahead of the competition because we integrated European talents with China’s sophisticated supply chain and sizable market early on,” Ye added.

Another example of Icicle’s long-term vision is the soon-to-be-revealed industrial park in Songjiang on the outskirts of Shanghai.

Ten years in the making, the 1-million-square-foot space will feature advanced machinery, a fully automated logistic system Knapp imported from Austria, an Eton material handling system from Sweden, and a vegetation-filled rooftop garden, where the next Icicle fashion will take place next spring.

“Many brands prefer to move to cheaper places, but we insist on upgrading right here in Shanghai, which as you know is the most expensive place in China. If we only plan for the short term, it is impossible to do fixed asset investment like this,” added Ye.

He anticipates that the industrial park will not only increase production capability to better serve the expansion of Icicle and Carven, but it can become a platform to facilitate emerging talent and brands the company might invest in in the future.

“As a Chinese brand, our competitive edge should not be limited to marketing capabilities or how many doors we have worldwide, but how strong is your ability to materialize your fashion vision. We are benchmarking against top European companies such as Hermès and Louis Vuitton on how they build their value chains. Only by learning from the best, can China have a luxury house of its own,” noted Ye.

As of 2023, the company operates some 270 stores in 100 cities in China, as well as five international points of sale.

In addition to its two Paris flagships, on Avenue George V and Faubourg du Saint Honoré, and one corner in Le Bon Marché, the latest two are in Japan. One is in the Hankyu department store in the western coastal metropolis of Osaka, and another in Toyko’s busiest department store, Isetan Shinjuku.

Ye confirmed the company plans to further expand Icicle globally, with more flagships in other fashion capitals such as Milan, London, and New York. But it will happen only after they are confident enough with the operation of its existing international outposts.

“We have little brand recognition here [internationally]. Consumers don’t know about us, but those who come upon us, love what we are offering. We are taking a long view here. The business in Paris varies since the market is still recovering. But as you can see, both of our Paris flagships are huge. It shows our commitment to Paris. We are not going anywhere,” he added.

With regard to domestic expansion, Ye said Icicle won’t move further into lower-tier cities. Instead, it is looking to work on retail projects that are closely integrated with the architectural and cultural heritage of key Chinese cities.

The first example of that vision is the ICCF Garden store at the intersection of the tree-lined Hengshan Road and Dongping Road in downtown Shanghai.

With a November opening date, the project, spanning more than 17,000 square feet across four houses — two of them protected buildings — will have the first street-facing dedicated stores for both Icicle and Carven in China; a café; a bookstore, and a French-Chinese fusion fine dining experience, which Ye has high hope for obtaining a Michelin star or two in the future.

“We are looking to explore the cultural heritage of each of the cities. In Shanghai, we chose to be in the historic block stamped with a French flair, which is now a trendy neighborhood among fashion shoppers. And if we go to Beijing, ideally, we would do it in a Siheyuan. We also hope that through our revitalization, the legacy of these beautiful old buildings can once again be a part of the urban life of Chinese people,” he added.