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Since launching in 2023, New York-based Lii has fast become an industry darling. The sample requests come in hard and fast for magazine shoots, and the brand boasts a roster of famous faces including Greta Lee and Ayo Edebiri, thanks to stylist Danielle Goldberg.
But outside of the tight-knit fashion world, Lii is still relatively unknown — 24-year-old designer Zane Li is the first to admit. “The public is not that familiar with the brand, but we’ve gotten so much support from stylists, photographers, editors and magazines” he says. “I think things are marinating.”
Li is hoping that Tuesday’s runway show — the brand’s first — will change this fact. “The show is a perfect moment for us to present the clothes in movement, to show to a bigger audience,” he says. Even so, the young designer is keeping it small, with about 100 guests and in keeping with Lii’s ethos.
Lii’s entire brand rollout has been carefully curated. The brand showed on-schedule in 2024, by appointment. Its second collection was reviewed by Vogue Runway. Autumn/Winter 2025 was exclusively stocked on Ssense. The clothes have been featured in magazines from W to Harper’s Bazaar. It’s a distinctly fashiony approach in an age where brands often take off faster with viral stunts and Instagram-friendly aesthetics. Lii’s account, conversely, is made up of pared-back lookbook shots with a few magazine features sprinkled in, plus a save the date for Tuesday’s show.
Now, Lii is kicking things up a notch. This season in Paris, where Li was in town for pre-market sales, the brand operated with Clothes Agency, which works with brands including Wales Bonner and Courrèges on the agency side, and has New York’s Luar in its showroom. Sales were up fivefold, the brand says. Lii is doing regional exclusives with stores in different regions, including France, Italy and Japan. Hong Kong’s Joyce and Seoul’s Amomento are new stockists for SS26. And now, the brand is on the CFDA calendar for the first time.
With the runway show, Lii will build out its world — really, for the first time — beyond the clothes. “What I want to do is definitely beyond just patterning, just draping, just fabric choices,” he says. “I’m really into how music influences how the model walks down the runway; and how the audience sees a string of fabric, or how elastic swings in front of them; and then how the texture and the fabrics of the full look [juxtaposes] with the white wall or carpet.”