At 8 p.m. on July 15, on the east bank of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, Chinese menswear brand LILANZ LESS IS MORE unveiled its latest season show in collaboration with designer Xander Zhou at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai. Over the past four years, three shows have witnessed the brand's continuous evolution from "youth businesswear" to "youth business fashion."
Behind this evolution is a convincing record of strong results:Since 2023, LILANZ LESS IS MORE has consistently achieved around 30% strong sales growth each year; in full-year 2025, revenue grew 28.4% year-on-year to RMB 1.147 billion, with its share of LILANZ Group's total revenue rising from 16.8% in 2022 to 28.2%, making it a veritable second growth curve.
Amid a market environment where "moderate consumer recovery" and "intensifying industry polarization" coexist, LILANZ LESS IS MORE has bucked the trend to build its own acceleration, driving this leading Chinese menswear company to continue its upward leap.
LILANZ LESS IS MORE × XANDER ZHOU Autumn/Winter · Series Three
Rough concrete architecture framed the show venue; outside the glass curtain wall, neon lights lit up one after another, while inside there were no elaborate installations—only a raised runway. As models walked past, the lighting traced the silhouettes of the clothes.
As more and more fashion shows introduce elaborate art installations, LILANZ LESS IS MORE still adheres to the philosophy of "less is more," using "subtraction" to focus attention on the clothing itself. This commitment to "minimalist aesthetics" is precisely the externalization of its internal innovation logic: returning to the essence of clothing, putting product at the core, and building a clear and complete system from positioning to channels.
"The emergence and growth of LILANZ LESS IS MORE is the distillation of LILANZ's 40-year brand and its people-centric culture," wrote Wang Junhong, Executive Director and Vice President of LILANZ Group, before the show. "It has not traversed a long cycle, yet it is the fruit of LILANZ's accumulation and refinement. It has vigorous vitality and limitless potential, and will grow into what LILANZ will look like tomorrow."
From "Youth Businesswear" to "Youth Business Fashion"
From "Youth in Action" on the Anping Bridge, a World Cultural Heritage site in Quanzhou, to "From Stone to Form" at Lu Xun Park in Shanghai, and now to this season's "City Spectrum"—four years, three shows, bearing witness to a key leap in the positioning of LILANZ LESS IS MORE.
Looking back on this journey, Wang Junhong said: "These three shows were not planned from the start, but each time there was no reason for it not to happen."
In 2023, LILANZ LESS IS MORE used the Anping Bridge show in Quanzhou to demonstrate the brand's deep connection with local culture, while announcing the brand slogan "Youth Business, It Should Be Relaxed," clarifying its minimalist product style, category structure and core customer base, and laying the foundation for subsequent channel layout.
In 2025, through the "From Stone to Form" show at Lu Xun Park in Shanghai, LILANZ LESS IS MORE presented the multiple identities of modern urban men through "relaxed clothing structures," completing a multi-scenario layout while taking an important step toward "youth business fashion."
At this show on the banks of the Huangpu River, LILANZ LESS IS MORE filled out the meaning of "youth business fashion" more fully, and on the basis of deepening product strength, advanced the contemporary character of menswear fashion one level further.
This evolution and deepening from "youth businesswear" to "youth business fashion" is underpinned by LILANZ's courage to reinvent, to assert and to lead a new business menswear aesthetic.
As for the definition of "new business aesthetics," Wang Junhong summarized: "In different periods, the functional value of new business aesthetics has never changed, but its sense of form keeps changing. It occurs under people's strong recognition of their own independent personality and cognitive awareness, and empowers a group of people. On this basis, the wearing appeal produced—whether novel or classic—can all be defined as 'new business aesthetics.'"
Product First: Redefining the Contemporary Male Functional Wardrobe
Deepening in tandem with the brand positioning is the layout of LILANZ LESS IS MORE's product lines and its experiments in design aesthetics.
Under the product strategy of "depth through categories, breadth through scenarios," the LILANZ LESS IS MORE team keeps pondering one question: what kind of clothes do young business men aged 25-35 actually need in different scenarios? Based on this inquiry, the brand has broken down the originally generalized "youth businesswear" into five major series—urban casual, commuting, lifestyle sports, quiet luxury, and designer collaborations.
"The birth of the five series stems from our always putting product first and truly switching our perspective to that of consumers, so that we can discover users' pain points and needs," Liu Guangliang, Vice President of LILANZ China and head of LESS IS MORE, told Luxe.Co.
The designer collaboration series is a particularly special one among the five, carrying the strategic role of leading the brand's evolution from "youth businesswear" to "youth business fashion," adding trendiness and fashionability to clothing on the basis of business DNA and quality assurance.
This upgrade does not stop at a superficial layering of styles, but is achieved through a deeper methodology.
When asked how the creative approach of this season's collection differs from the previous two, Xander Zhou told Luxe.Co candidly: "In the past, we re-understood business attire through a restrained, rational approach, letting design step back and focusing on the structure and proportions of individual pieces. This season, however, places more emphasis on how different garments form an overall visual system of a male wardrobe, in which every single item can be styled into a different look."
From focusing on the validity of individual pieces to pursuing the coherence of an overall style—this iteration of creative method is essentially a response to market trends: young male consumers are no longer satisfied with basic clothing needs; they are beginning to explore diverse, distinctive style expressions, as well as more effortless styling formulas that can switch between different scenarios.
As Xander Zhou observed: "Youth business is no longer just business attire in the traditional sense, but a more open and more flexible state of life."
He also shared with us the design inspiration for three looks from this show, each of which can adapt to different scenarios such as business, gatherings and holiday leisure.
Look 1: Using LILANZ LESS IS MORE's DNA color "gray," it references crisp, densely woven wool fabric, and the slightly widened suit lapels increase the versatility of this season's suit. If the hat is removed, it is entirely a suit that can be worn every day.
Look 2: A velvet-textured jacket with moderately rounded shoulder pads, carrying some of the silhouette of 1980s menswear. Through shoulder pads and a cinched waist, it emphasizes the inverted-triangle body proportion.
Look 3: Layering a wool coat over a velvet suit. The crisp texture of the azure blue wool coat is very suitable for autumn and winter, while the velvet suit inside also presents a festive sense of splendor. Worn alone, the velvet suit paired with jeans can become a perfect date look. When the two pieces are put together, plus a top hat, it immediately becomes a very striking runway look. This is the versatility of the same piece, and this versatility requires a sufficiently solid piece to support it.
The segmentation of product scenarios has also driven the simultaneous iteration of channel strategy. Currently, LILANZ LESS IS MORE adopts a fully direct-operated model, dividing physical stores into three categories, each focusing on displaying different series of products:
- Flagship stores opened in high-end shopping malls, mainly featuring high-tier products represented by the designer collaboration series, supplemented by regular-scenario products;
- Stores rooted in mass commercial complexes such as community shopping malls and chain shopping malls, mainly stocking regular-scenario products;
- Outlet stores, which, on the basis of regular-scenario products, appropriately increase the proportion of designer collaboration products.
According to Liu Guangliang, calculated by SKU, the designer series' share of channel orders has risen to 30%, while contributing 25% of sales, becoming an important pillar in terms of actual performance.
Deep Collaboration with Designers: "Two Tracks Merging into One"
LILANZ Group has always maintained an open attitude toward external designer collaborations. In Wang Junhong's view, this stems from the sense of crisis that constantly accompanies LILANZ's culture.
Since 2021, the group has collaborated with a number of designers: the main brand LILANZ has successively collaborated with independent designer brand PRONOUNCE (Li Yushan & Zhou Jun) on the Spring/Summer 2025 capsule collection "THE ENDLESS HOLIDAY," and with designer Chen Peng on the "Cheng Qi" capsule down jacket collection; LILANZ LESS IS MORE has joined forces with designers Lü Dianlin and Fang Fang to hold a finale show at Shanghai Fashion Week, and has collaborated with Xander Zhou for many years.
"The collaborating designers have undoubtedly opened up more visible scope for LILANZ Group, while LILANZ can also clearly see itself in the collision. Every collaboration is a process of self-reinvention through borrowed forms." Wang Junhong summarized.
Among the many designers, Xander Zhou is the one who has collaborated most closely with LILANZ LESS IS MORE. This season's "City Spectrum" show is already the third collaborative presentation show he has helmed for LILANZ LESS IS MORE.
Years of working together have also led both sides to develop a "two tracks merging into one" collaboration model: Xander Zhou's team is responsible for product styles and creative direction, while the brand internally provides a strong supply chain system and technical pattern-making support.
Wang Junhong, who appeared at the 2026 Luxe.Co Fashion Innovation and Investment Forum in April this year, said: "Letting designers we trust deeply participate in our own system—I think this has never happened among Chinese menswear brands."
Above: Wang Junhong (left) and Xander Zhou (center)
For Xander Zhou, years of collaboration have also given him a deeper understanding of and emotional connection to the concept of "LESS IS MORE." "'Less is more' is a progressive process—subtraction, establishing design order, and then gradual progression. After several years of collaboration, I hope the phrase LESS IS MORE becomes a lifestyle, a menswear experience, rather than just a design slogan."
This deepened understanding is also reflected in the choice of venue for this show. "The Modern Art Museum Shanghai is a very special location; it stands on the Pudong side, which faces the future, yet always gazes across the river at the Bund, which symbolizes the past. This is also the second time I have held a show at this venue," Xander Zhou said. "It represents the beginning of a new stage for me and LILANZ LESS IS MORE."
Conclusion
"Through three appearances, LILANZ LESS IS MORE seems more composed and free-spirited, and amid the results of market growth, it has grown into a personality with charisma and begun to take root," Wang Junhong wrote in an emotional footnote to the evolution of LILANZ LESS IS MORE. What the next stop will look like remains to be revealed; "as that moment approaches, LILANZ's unique narrative expression and vision will naturally emerge. What is certain is that it will still sincerely answer to 'simple yet not simple.'"
Looking back at this internal venture that began in 2016, LILANZ Group has spent nearly a decade opening up the LESS IS MORE "second growth curve"—through continuous calibration of positioning, the iteration of products from "individual pieces" to "a system," refined operation of fully direct-operated channels, and a collaboration model of deep symbiosis with external designers, it has carved out a differentiated growth path in the fiercely competitive Chinese menswear market.
And the core logic of this path has remained consistent: all corporate decisions and actions should revolve around product strength and innovation—this may also be the highly reference-worthy brand practice sample that LILANZ LESS IS MORE brings to the industry.
｜Image source: LILANZ LESS IS MORE, on-site photography by Luxe.Co
｜Editor: Maier
