Shushu/Tong, the Shanghai-based fashion label that built a particular brand of femininity around ruffles, bows and pleated skirts, is evolving its innocent beauty into that of an awakened muse. For spring 2026, the brand built a story inspired by the female lead in “Cléo from 5 to 7,” the French New Wave classic.

”We want a subtle sense of brokenness,” said Liushu Lei, who founded Shushu/Tong with Yutong Jiang, who were classmates at the London College of Fashion.

Ten years ago the brand began with a 6,000-word business proposal that was part of their visa application to stay in London. But the duo eventually decided to move back to Shanghai to realize their creative vision — building a fantasy of a strong female character with a penchant for saccharine dresses.

Now, after 10 years of perfect sweetness, the brand is ready to adult-up, as Agnès Varda’s heroine Cléo did while impatiently awaiting her medical diagnosis.

Borrowing a line from Cléo — “As long as I’m beautiful, I’m alive“ — Shushu/Tong decided to reimagine female fragility as “a fervor for life,” explained Lei.

Built on distressed fabrics, Shushu/Tong’s latest collection included grand ballgowns that came with frayed finishes, linen bodysuits with excessive ragged edges, and Edwardian button-downs haphazardly hand-stitched to emulate surgical ones. Oversize raglan shirts with stretched-out collars, rendered in multiple versions of vintage floral prints, visualize its female protagonist’s mental distress.

“It’s also about exploring softer design elements with structured ones,” explained Lei, pointing to a sturdy fishtail skirt made with waxed cotton — with decorative pleats, sometimes metal eyelets, the workwear-inspired piece is a revolutionary move for a brand long defined by tightly controlled shapes.

New textures, such as golden tweed, stained emerald green and distressed leather, furthered the designer’s exploration of the playful space between Lolita-feminine ideals and adulthood.

Despite all the new elements at play, Shushu/Tong’s mischievous charm remains carefully choreographed. “No sexy bras, meaning no sweetheart necklines,” dictated Lei. “And girls should always wear socks, never barefooted.

“It’s about finding a deeply personal point of view. I design for Tongtong [Yutong Jiang], and perhaps an imagined self,” Lei said of the brand proposition.

“That means we also don’t want to differentiate between designing for a Chinese clientele and a Western one, fashion is a global business,” added Jiang, who is the left brain of the brand, managing the business side of things, including brand partnerships, pop-ups, legal affairs and finance.

Most recently the brand worked with Gentle Monster on a viral collection with a campaign featuring K-pop girl band Aespa member Ningning. It also has an ongoing collaboration with Asics that started in 2022.

For Echo Zhuang, former buyer at Feng Mao, Net-a-porter‘s China operation who has worked with the brand since its inception, Shushu/Tong “will always be remembered for its Sukeban girl [delinquent girl in Japanese] phase,” Zhuang said.

To wit, Shushu/Tong’s bestseller on its Tmall official store for the last few years has been a little black dress with double peplum hems. Priced at 3,120 renminbi, or $438, the A-line number came out of its fall 2023 collection, where most of the silhouettes were based on school uniforms.

For Lei, the piece embodied his fondness for structured fabrics, recalling the sleek modernism of Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin. Variations of the look have since been immortalized on social media by the likes of Blackpink and New Jeans members.

For Zhuang, the Disneyfication of femininity was the key to Shushu/Tong’s viral success. “Shushu/Tong has been telling a Disney princess story for many years; it’s less obvious now, but it’s the foundation of the brand. Now they are ready to take some risks style-wise — but within certain parameters so it doesn’t affect overall sales,” Zhuang added.

“For example, it’s taken the 1960s, slightly period dressing-inspired route, which is not an aesthetic that appeals to the general public, but it certainly pinpoints a brand new niche audience,” Zhuang said.

For Zemira Xu, cofounder of Tube Showroom, which works with Shushu/Tong in the Chinese market, “in times of economic uncertainty, waxing poetic about the golden age of capitalism certainly feeds into a collective yearning for the ‘beauty of the boom years,’” referring to a new buzzword taking over Chinese social media.

Having built an instantly recognizable brand image — amplified by whimsical accessories from longtime collaborator Yvmin — the “girlcore powerhouse” took a major step in 2022 by opening its first standalone store at Shanghai’s JC Plaza through a joint venture with Labelhood, its longtime wholesale partner.

The shop, a 1,900-square-foot dreamy boudoir swathed in baby-blue carpet, quickly became a traffic magnet for the mall, then a must-visit destination for style-conscious South Korean tourists, among whom Shushu/Tong is known as “a Chinese luxury brand.”

Taking advantage of Chinese mall operators’ newfound interest in young designer labels, Shushu/Tong opened two other stand-alone stores in Hangzhou and Shenzhen, both with The MixC, a high-end shopping mall franchise.

Despite the ongoing trade war with the U.S. — a key factor behind the restructuring of Ssense, one of Shushu/Tong’s major wholesale partners — the designers remain eager to expand retail operations in the U.S., as well as in neighboring Japan and South Korea.

Its North American market is projected to grow 20 percent in 2025, while its South Korean market is expected to jump 50 percent this year.

The brand counts more than 40 international stockists, including Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Dover Street Market, Boontheshop and GR8.

For the designers, more stand-alone stores means more creative control. “In the past, when designing clothes, I’d always think, will the buyers like this? But now I care less — I make what I want, and if it doesn’t sell, I’ll just make something else right away.

“I might start with a really beautiful color and make a basic version, or vice versa. For me, it means more opportunities to experiment with different colors and play with fabrics,” Lei said.