The third-floor space is essentially a small white-walled square with high ceilings and three windows looking onto a balcony that faces an interior airshaft. On one wall is a vintage-style sink, and at the center of the room is a Donald Judd-ish birch table from the popular furniture shop Lichen in Ridgewood, Brooklyn. Directly across is a floor-to-ceiling industrial rod set-up stuffed with brightly-colored samples, some in plastic coverings.
Li’s desk is spare and tidy—an orange stapler and tape dispenser, a blue square of Post-Its, a paper cup of coffee, and a rectangular box of Chinese cigarettes. In some ways, it evokes his own work—familiar American sportswear shapes distilled into geometric forms and rendered in cheery Crayola hues of pink, red, powder blue, and kelly green. “Lii is about making familiar things unfamiliar, in a certain way—through fabrics, through colors,” Li says. “We want to take certain shapes into people’s real life and keep the volume, keep the look, but make the garment practical and make it accessible for the wearer.”
Art and photography are frequent starting points, and next to his desk is a baker’s rack stuffed with thick picture books. Not far from his laptop are printouts of pictures and a binder filled with fabrics. “We’re trying to see what kind of combo or what kind of formula looks good visually,” he says. “And from there I’ll start patterning, I’ll start designing, which is a personal and abstract process, I will say, because it’s not really … I try not to start a collection from a garment. I kind of always try to start collections from either a piece of Ellsworth Kelly work, a piece of installation art, a Balenciaga gown.”
