Pronounce Spring 2025 Menswear Collection

Jun Zhao and Yushan Li of Pronounce spent the months in between their Milan Fashion Week debut in January and their sophomore presentation this past weekend adding “costume design” to their resumes. The pair lent their whimsical hands and minds to the Chinese production of “Lady M,” a British musical based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Their weeks spent finessing the details of the costumes from every angle explains why this season they opted for a presentation in lieu of a runway show.

In addition to all the practical reasons for a presentation—more time for press and buyers to come see the collection, the opportunity to walk folks through the collection, etc.—Li said their work on the musical led to a new focus on details and the subtlety of their textures and techniques. “When we do a show, it’s more about the full look and the movement and things you can appreciate from a distance, but with a presentation it’s about getting up close and experiencing the details.”

There was certainly lots to take in at what the designers christened their “wild, wild garden.” Li and Zhao worked with Chinese craftspeople to reimagine a traditional weaving and knotting technique, employed here to make decorative insects. It is usually done in straw, but instead the designers utilized leftover fabrics, which they also employed to make ornamental leaves to use as appliqués on summer-y loose gauge knits. Elsewhere, Li and Zhao twisted and knotted yarns and fabrics around the body, sometimes as decorative vests and other times as tangled exoskeletons over their more classic styles. Rope, a Pronounce signature, was employed as an ingenious, if a little literal, interpretation of the way love envelops us. It was most successfully applied as delicate lines over the plackets of sharply tailored coats, or over and around one of the pair’s popular Mao suits cut in denim.

Their overarching narrative was the story of the Hong Kongese screen legend Grace Chang, who famously starred in the 1960 musical The Wild, Wild Rose. The collection imagines her traveling to the present, embracing a more androgynous look. Li and Zhao deserve props for their storytelling, but even more so for their honest and refreshing approach to reinvigorating and reinterpreting their own culture. Pronounce is becoming one of Shanghai’s most compelling fashion exports. Take away the flowers and insects and fruits in this garden and you are still left with a lush and fecund landscape.