Ray Chu takes Taiwan to London Fashion Week

For Spring/Summer 2027, the Taiwanese designer brings together botanical references, gender fluid tailoring, Swarovski crystals and an irreverent approach to sensuality.

Ray Chu’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection begins with a flower, but there is little conventionally romantic about what follows.

Presented during London Fashion Week, Fans Only Club takes the Sambucus flower, known in Taiwan as 冇骨消, and pulls its clustered form apart across tailoring, translucent fabrics, prints, embellishment and pieces designed closely around the body.

It gives Chu a recognisably Taiwanese starting point without turning the collection into an exercise in literal national symbolism. Instead, the flower becomes part of a broader examination of identity and community, themes that have increasingly defined the designer’s work since establishing his label in Taiwan in 2016.

“The Sambucus flower does not need to be loud to be noticed,” Chu says. “Each blossom is incredibly small, but when they bloom together, they create something strong and almost otherworldly.”

Taiwan through a contemporary wardrobe

Chu translates that structure into a gender fluid summer wardrobe in which tailoring remains central but is increasingly interrupted by transparency and movement.

Two original prints carry the Taiwanese references most visibly. Sambucus abstracts the flower itself, while Taiwan Banana Club, which first appeared in Chu’s Pre Spring 2027 collection, brings a more colourful and nostalgic interpretation of Taiwanese culture.

The collection also uses Swarovski ReCreated Crystals, made using crystal manufacturing breakage. They appear in clustered formations across selected looks, echoing the botanical inspiration rather than functioning simply as surface decoration.

Material experimentation continues elsewhere. Mint fibre is used for lightweight shirting, while quick drying Icy Grass jersey brings technical performance into pieces intended for everyday wear. Chu says the collection predominantly uses natural fibre based or more environmentally conscious materials.

Sensuality with a sense of humour

The more unexpected elements arrive through Chu’s collaborators.

Japanese artist MOMOJIRI WORKS has reinterpreted the Sambucus forms as wearable objects, using twisting lines and unusual proportions to create pieces that sit somewhere between jewellery and sculpture.

Then there is Hello Nancy.

The Hong Kong sexual wellness company sponsored the presentation, with its tennis inspired pleasure devices appearing alongside selected looks. The partnership is deliberately provocative, but it also fits within Chu’s established interest in the relationship between clothing, the body, sexuality and self expression.

Its Ace and Smash products become part accessory, part visual joke, extending the colourful world of Taiwan Banana Club beyond clothing.

That willingness to move between serious construction and humour prevents Fans Only Club from becoming overly reverential about its source material.

Chu may have started with the natural structure of a Taiwanese flower, but the collection ultimately ranges much further: Swarovski crystals meet technical jersey, botanical imagery meets body conscious tailoring, and wearable sculpture sits alongside objects normally found far outside a fashion presentation.

The result is unmistakably Ray Chu. Taiwan provides the foundation, but London is where he has chosen to push it somewhere else.