This past Valentine’s Day, inside an unassuming Elizabeth Street showroom overlooking Chinatown, a lively wonderland bloomed with sensual corsetry and voluminous silhouettes sculpted into hearts. But twenty-five-year-old Yitao Li’s inaugural NYFW collection is far more than cute and sweet. Models in plaid platforms, rugged braids, and sheer plaid bodysuits graced the mossy world like swamp fairies. Layers of distressed denim and intricate corsetry reflected the complex layers that shaped the line’s aesthetic. Innovative yet wearable, quiet yet provocative, feminine yet rebellious, her label Taottao left a resounding impact on my fashion week experience.
Founded in 2022, shortly after Yitao graduated from FIT, the brand is derived from her nickname in Chinese. The Taiyuan-born designer founded the line despite familial expectations, as her unwavering love for design was unstoppable. She applied her expertise in textile manipulation and innovation from her extensive roster of internships – including Monse, Thom Browne, and Kim Shui – to her designs, seeking to challenge convention and celebrate individuality through her work.
Her AW24 collection is inspired by vintage cartoons – especially Neighborhood Story, a ‘90s Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Ai Yazawa. Yitao’s interpretation of the story prevails on every level of the collection, from the colour palette to the prints and beyond. When asked how plaids became the recurring pattern throughout the collection, Yitao shared that she “zoomed in on the manga and used a really pixelated, close up rendition of the image as a brushstroke to draw her clothes, which yielded plaid.” The colour palette of swampy greens, beiges, and muted pinks was also derived from the cartoon series.
As for the other most prominent recurring trope, Li shares that her senior collection in university was the springboard for her usage of hearts in both silhouettes and cutouts. “I originally discovered the heart shape when I was working fabric around the hips and waist of a form, and by exaggerating the shape, I naturally found a heart.”
Continuing to experiment, Li shares that her favourite part of developing this collection was learning from the process and leaning into the unexpected colours that emerged from washing and dying denim. She leaves us eagerly awaiting her next body of work, which is sure to be full of more emotion, rebellious risks, and unbridled individuality.
Explore the collection…
