Our Favorite Hong Kong Designers From CENTRESTAGE, Asia's Annual Fashion Showcase
From ’80s Hong Kong horror film-inspired collections to in-your-face brights, these are the local designers we’re still thinking about.
CENTRESTAGE is basically Hong Kong’s answer to fashion week, only amped all the way up. Like the neon-lit vertical city itself, the four-day fashion extravaganza is gloriously overstimulating, packing runway shows, fashion talks and a sprawling trade show under one colossal roof. Presented by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), this year’s 11th edition, held September 2-5, brought around 270 brands from 24 countries and regions to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.
But we were there for the shows. There must be something in Hong Kong’s water, because our favorite collections all came courtesy of homegrown talent. CENTRESTAGE ELITES, the splashy opening-night showcase reserved for a major designer, has attracted serious fashion star power in recent years, with headliners including Hong Kong-born avant-garde superstar Robert Wun and Beijing-born couture queen Guo Pei, who famously dressed Rihanna in that enormous yellow gown for the 2015 Met Gala.
This year, crazy, sexy, cool Hong Kong label Kit Wan Studios kicked things off with a kaleidoscopic, cosmic bang. The following night, the “Fashion Hong Kong” group runway show brought together 112 mountainyam, Z I D I, ARTY: ACTIVE and ANGUS TSUI, with each local designer interpreting the theme “Hong Kong Dopamine” in wildly different ways. From blinding brights and surreal silhouettes to literal mid-runway workouts and blood-red horror, the city’s designers delivered plenty to obsess over.
Kit Wan Studios
You can usually tell what to expect from a collection before the show even starts: just scan the front row. Kit Wan Studios’ was a dead giveaway. Hong Kong celebs and influencers packed the seats alongside global fashion fixtures like Irene Kim and Susie Bubble, most decked out in Wan’s own acid-bright prints and bold designs. Led by Hong Kong-born creative director Kit Wan, who has a serious penchant for sci-fi, anime and futuristic stage armor, the label has become a go-to for Cantopop stars who like their stagewear on the freakier, albeit still fabulous, side.
In recent years, Wan’s reach has stretched far beyond Hong Kong: Teddy Swims wore one of his looks to the 2025 Grammys, and Alan Cumming wore a piece so major on an episode of The Traitors that it earned an emphatic “ohhhh YASSS” from Lisa Rinna.
For SS27, Wan’s three-act collection, “MUTANT // MYTHOLOGY,” unleashed more than 30 new looks. There were bubblegum-pink latex hoods, cyberpunk-y pieces that lit up like Christmas trees and one Doja Cat-ready number that gave off hot pink-and-orange, spiky high-fashion sea urchin vibes. There were red-carpet-ready showstoppers, too: Belgian supermodel Anouck Lepère stormed the runway in a trippy galaxy-print ring orbiting her hips and a flying-saucer-esque hat that felt very The Fifth Element.
Hong Kong model Christina Chung, who made waves walking Chanel couture at nearly 60 earlier this year, went equally intergalactic in an acid-print look exploding with huge white crystal-like bursts, as if shooting stars had somehow become wearable. A moody, pitched-down cover of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” played during the finale, adding to the show’s hypnotic beauty. In short, if the Met Gala ever announces a sci-fi-chic or “Alien Superstar” theme, everyone should be wearing Kit Wan Studios.
112 mountainyam
After last year’s garden-party-gone-wild of a collection, 112 mountainyam traded greenery for neon overload. The SS27 collection, “The Joy of Feathers,” played with reversible designs that flipped between natural fabrics and tougher technical textiles, but color did most of the talking. Hot pink, traffic-cone orange, highlighter green and crisp white pumped down the runway as a prismatic vortex spun behind the models. One standout layered a bright pink jacket over cascading orange-and-fuchsia pieces, topped off with pink-tinted shades. The effect was somewhere between a daytime rave and a sugar rush you could wear. A dopamine hit, indeed.
𝗭 𝗜 𝗗 𝗜
Z I D I went full kooky with its “AETHER” collection, exploring weightlessness through clothes that seem to fight gravity itself. Designer Nathan Moy referenced everything from a ballerina’s horizontal crinoline and Marilyn Monroe’s famously windblown subway dress to a schoolgirl’s rigid khaki skirt, turning those inspirations into sculptural silhouettes that looked frozen mid-motion. On the runway, feathery knits, sheer lace, rippling black-and-white ruffles and rigid, sculptural shapes mixed with candy-colored handbags. But the wigs were the real stars: towering, roller-set creations that landed somewhere between Marie Antoinette and the bouffant-haired Martian Girl from Mars Attacks!
ARTY:ACTIVE
ARTY:ACTIVE brought “Hong Kong Dopamine” straight to the gym. Designer, illustrator and former competitive mountain biker Gary Tsang’s SS27 collection, “Messy Symphonic,” looked to Hong Kong after dark for a lineup of cycling shorts, technical jackets, waist packs, saturated digital graphics and chunky sneakers. Models with neon, club-kid eye makeup stopped mid-runway to work out with kettlebells and medicine balls. The vibe? Sporty Spice at an after-hours rave.
ANGUS TSUI
At this point, an ANGUS TSUI show without something slightly creepy or apocalypse-adjacent would honestly concern us. His SS27 collection, “404: Ha Ha Haunting,” traded last year’s outer-space nightmares for homegrown horror, drawing on Hong Kong’s cult 1980s horror films. A seemingly endless blood-red corridor lined with glowing EXIT signs filled the giant screen behind the runway, setting the spooky scene as models emerged with wet-look hair, bruised red-and-black eye makeup, glossy oxblood corsetry, exposed chests and enough straps and buckles to give the whole thing serious bondage-dungeon energy.
One especially wild look featured a hand-sculpted mutated red spider lily blooming across the model’s torso and head like a Demogorgon had developed a couture habit, paired with tiny buckle shorts and thigh-swallowing Exoskeleton Xeno Boots. Creepy, sexy and entirely captivating. Pop stars yearning to make a sartorial splash, take note.
