Cheney Chan is blending traditional Chinese craft with modern couture, creating dazzling designs captivating Eastern and Western audiences; the rising fashion star gives us his take on dreaming big

Feb 7, 2025

Rising fashion designer Cheney Chan gives us his take on dreaming big. Photo: Handout

He made his unofficial debut at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week last June, but his growing social media presence – 5.5 million Douyin followers and counting – has already made Chan a popular influencer

“You see these feathers?” asks Chinese couture designer Cheney Chan, pointing to a breathtaking work – not a bird, but a dress, covered in finely cut fibres that appear so feather-like that Chan has to clarify they aren’t real. They represent something more remarkable, these feathery wisps fashioned from layers upon layers of silk, painstakingly peeled apart like bananas, according to Chan, to achieve that airy and ethereal effect. This is a marriage of contemporary art and traditional craft, where Mother Nature meets human innovation and the genius of a young designer meets age-old wisdom backed by thousands of years of civilisation.

Cheney Chan’s visions are fast making him one of China’s most promising fashion designers. Photo: Handout

It’s telling that Chan chose to use one of ancient China’s greatest inventions – a precious, delicate material made from the metamorphosis of silkworms – to create his own, marking the designer’s impressive evolution over the years and fully realising his transformative vision of fashion. Just as silk, woven into luxurious fabrics and traded along its namesake Silk Road, became the hottest new commodity on the block as early as two millennia ago, Chan is now one of mainland China’s most promising young exports – a home-grown talent making revolutionary breakthroughs in the East and West.