For fashion designer Jizhuo Li, clothing is both a functional object and a means of examining how conventional ideas of identity shape personal expression. This approach is reflected in her award-winning collection, The Lady and the Knight, which has earned recognition across multiple international design competitions, including a Gold Award at the NY Product Design Awards and Platinum honors at the MUSE Design Awards, French Design Awards, and French Fashion Awards.
Drawing from the visual language of 1920s menswear and womenswear, the collection brings structured tailoring together with soft volume, decorative handwork, and practical construction. Rather than presenting masculinity and femininity as fixed or mutually exclusive categories, Li uses clothing to explore how qualities traditionally associated with both can coexist within an individual identity.
Li develops her concepts through garment construction, using silhouette, material, pattern, and movement to translate conceptual ideas into precise, wearable forms.
“I am interested in how a garment changes the way the body moves and is perceived, and how the body, in turn, affects the way the garment functions,” Li explains. “That relationship is central to my design process. I aim to begin each piece with a clearly structured idea and realize it through precise construction and detailed craftsmanship.”
The NY Product Design Awards celebrates work that demonstrates how thoughtful design can combine utility, originality, and visual refinement. Open to independent, commercial, and research-driven projects, the program recognizes designers and organizations whose products address practical needs while contributing meaningfully to everyday experience.
The award is particularly relevant to The Lady and the Knight, a collection in which Li treats visual expression and practical function as parts of the same design problem. The garments are designed to communicate the collection’s ideas without becoming detached from the needs of the wearer.
“Receiving this recognition is an important validation of the design language I have developed,” Li says. “My work combines elaborate visual details with a precise and rational making process. I want the garments to feel imaginative while remaining connected to everyday life. This award confirms the value of that approach.”
Add to that the collection’s Platinum wins at the MUSE Design Awards, French Design Awards, and French Fashion Awards, and it’s clear Li has built something rare: a design language rooted in conceptual rigor, elevated construction, and an obsessive attention to craft.
The Lady and the Knight is based on the view that traditional definitions of masculinity and femininity cannot fully account for the complexity of individual identity. Rather than treating these qualities as fixed opposites, the collection allows characteristics conventionally associated with both to exist within the same garments.
Li develops this idea through references to 1920s tailoring and dress. Padded shoulders and the squared construction of suit jackets are combined with the loose, dropped-waist silhouettes associated with women’s fashion of the period. Light-colored skirts, fine pintucking, and hand-embroidered floral ribbons soften the more rigid tailoring, creating a controlled contrast between structure and movement.
The collection consists of two principal looks. The first pairs a forest-green wool suit jacket with a loose-waisted cotton voile pintuck dress. The weight and structure of the jacket contrast with the lightness of the dress, creating a look suited to everyday settings while retaining the collection’s historical references.
The second look combines a waist-length brocade suit jacket with a loose-waisted silk skirt. Ribbon embroidery appears across both garments, connecting the tailored upper structure with the softer volume below. Integrated side pockets feature squared leather bases that help support and shape the skirt, giving a functional component of the garment an additional structural role.
Through these construction decisions, Li carries the collection’s examination of identity into the garments themselves. Masculine and feminine references are integrated through proportion, material contrast, tailoring, embroidery, and the physical relationship between the clothing and the wearer.
A disciplined process of material research and technical refinement plays a central role in Li’s design methodology, allowing her to translate initial concepts into precisely constructed garments.
“I begin with a clearly defined theme or question and develop it through material research, garment construction, and an examination of the historical uses of particular objects or forms of dress,” Li explains. “I refine structural relationships among silhouette, material, and construction so that each decision contributes to the final garment as a unified design.”
Li uses fabric mockups and selected unconventional materials as part of a structured development process, refining silhouette, material behavior, structural integrity, and decorative detail in relation to the body before final construction.
Through this disciplined process of material refinement and technical adjustment, Li controls proportion, movement, material behavior, and wearability while maintaining the conceptual integrity of the final construction.
In The Lady and the Knight, historical references do not remain decorative influences. They are reorganized through the structure of the garments to examine how identity can contain qualities traditionally assigned to different forms of dress. The result is a collection in which personal expression, practical function, and historical research are resolved through the construction of the clothing itself.
Credits
Fashion Designer
Jizhuo Li
Photographer
Xianfan Zhu
Model
Mariah Moss
Model
Alexis Hall
Makeup Artist
Jiayu Guo
