The Staying Power Of Shushu/Tong

It’s been a banner season for Shushu/Tong. Within the three-month span of summer 2024 alone, the Shanghai-based label’s super-feminine offerings have been spotted on the likes of Alexa Chung, Jodie Turner-Smith, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Blackpink’s Lisa (née Lalisa Manobal). And that’s not even considering the countless looks that have appeared in high-end magazine editorials. Now, as fall comes into view, it’s unlikely the momentum will slow down. The brand’s pieces, which are beloved for their powerful — never cutesy — approach to femininity perfectly reflect the current ribbon- and ruffle-filled state of fashion.

Here’s the thing, though: Shushu/Tong co-founders Liushu Lei and Yutong Jiang have always been fans of a well-placed frill or bow. (Or, like, 30 of them — a move they pulled off with aplomb for the label’s extremely prescient Spring 2016 season.) The rest of the world is simply catching up.

Since officially launching in 2015, the duo have become veritable masters of turning traditionally sweet design choices, like the use of gingham and lace, into surprisingly edgy garments. This well-refined expertise makes their new Fall/Winter 2024 collection, which hits stores in mere months before the company’s 10th anniversary, seem like something of a victory lap.

“I wanted it to have a dramatic effect in a very ’50s-style way, like corsets and big volume dresses,” Lei, who casually goes by Shushu, tells me one brisk August morning over a Zoom call with Yutong Jiang (Tongtong). He points to the 1958 film Gigi, starring the iconic Leslie Caron, as a key influence for the season — the costumes, not the antiquated ingenue-reforms-a-playboy plotline, of course. “Although the [movie’s] story is actually not very correct at this moment, I really liked its vibe.”

I see it. Packed with full, fluffy skirts, ruffled trims, and lots of feathers, the finished product reads as the topsy-turvy funhouse mirror version of a midcentury French socialite’s wardrobe. There’s impeccably tailored midi skirt suits covered in shimmering embellishments and swishy party dresses layered over knitwear; rosette-bedecked minis are cleverly paired with cozy balaclava hoods. As a whole, the 47-look lineup reads less of a coming-of-age musical than an edgy and elegant thriller.

This observation feels especially apt to me when Lei and Jiang reveal their earliest creative aspirations: to create the kind of hyperstylized anime characters they obsessed over as kids. “Tongtong and I were both huge fans of Japanese animation; that started long before our love for fashion,” Lei tells me, revealing that he originally dreamed of becoming a cartoonist. But somewhere between studying drawing in high school and (like many an artistic-minded millennial) following the OG Project Runway, he realized his passion for making clothes. Jiang — who attended the same high school as Lei but ran in a different circle of students — followed her own winding path that took her through a whopping 12 art and design school tests ahead of college. “I applied to two famous schools in China that are very good at fashion, and I passed the examinations,” she tells me. “So I think destiny brought me to fashion.”

It was at university, both in Shanghai and later during a masters program at the University of Arts in London, that Lei and Jiang properly met and connected. They learned their personalities worked well together on multiple levels. “We were roommates, which is quite a test for people to cooperate,” says Jiang, pointing out that they also happened to have very similar opinions on style. “Because we share the same aesthetic, and we were good friends for almost five years, we just wanted to try to start a business together.” And so, the concept for Shushu/Tong was born: a label inspired by the powerful anime personalities they had both admired growing up. “There are so many unique young female characters in Japanese animation, and the texts are so rich when we look into their diverse personalities and complex narratives,” the pair jointly tell me later over email. “They still represent our vision of both the Shushu/Tong girl — always romantic and playful, yet with a bold and strong heart.”

Almost a decade in, that dream has been fully realized. Shushu/Tong is now sold across an impressive list of high-end retailers, including Lane Crawford, Ssense, and Dover Street Market; the company has also become a go-to among Hollywood stylists who want to give their clients an in-the-know aura of being a fashion girl. (See: the majority of ’90s-esque mini dresses in Olivia Rodrigo’s wardrobe and Sydney Sweeney’s sultry LBD for a March talk at 92NY.) It’s a shift the pair started to see in early 2023, right after Time magazine featured wildly popular girl group Blackpink as 2022’s entertainer of the year. Several of the members, who are renowned for their sultry and coquettish fashion choices, wore Shushu/Tong throughout the shoot.

Moreover, Lei and Jiang have their working relationship down to a finely tuned science: He handles the main collection, marketing, and press. She works on HR duties and capsule drops, like a special bridal range for Ssense and their recent daisy-centric offerings for Net-a-Porter. They come together for fittings, and Jiang tries on every piece personally to give a woman’s perspective. She used to, Lei tells me with a knowing smile, be the fit model until he realized her petite frame was throwing off all his measurements. Jiang chimes in. “Everything I wear is oversized, so the [samples] would look good on me, and he’d be happy,” she remembers. “But when he tried it on the real model, it was not like what I was wearing… That’s when we realized I was the wrong [person] for fittings.”

As I chat with Lei and Jiang about their story, they occupy separate boxes on my screen but seem to be riding the same wavelength as they field my questions. They gesture to each other as they answer each one, and thoughtfully check their responses with each other. This compatibility has likely played no small part in their staying power in running a business in a highly competitive field during often turbulent times. Among these was navigating the incredibly strict lockdowns of 2020, which happened just as they were beginning to find their footing as a fledgling label.

“It was really tough, but I think we tried to solve all the difficulties in a very creative way,” says Lei, who recalls sending fabric and samples back and forth with a technician who couldn’t leave his small village because of tight restrictions. “I think because we’ve been trained with an extreme task, I feel much more competent with any difficulty in the future.”

When it comes to accessing what just might lie ahead for Shushu/Tong, though, Lei and Jiang are extraordinarily pragmatic. They become quiet and introspective when I press them for their wildest ambitions. “We’ve been asked this question a lot… but if there’s anything I want to accomplish, it’s for this brand to exist in 10 more years and still be relevant,” says Lei thoughtfully. “The most important thing is always the next fashion season.”