Yang Li went home to Perth, Australia, for Christmas. As per all good Aussie holidays, much of his was spent on the beach, hooning about (as they say Down Under) and hanging out with old mates from school. By the time he found himself 12,000 miles away in his London design studio, Li realized that Perth’s endless light and casual lifestyle needed to be reflected in his work. “I thought this season he should come undone a bit. Be freer and lighter, more sensual even.”

Cotton shirts treated for maximum scrunching, as if worn in a salt-rich atmosphere, were displayed in his Paris showroom against oversize acid-washed denim shorts featuring an old-fashioned lace tie detail that used to feature on surfing shorts. Roomy peaked collar jackets with drawstring waists came in panels of black-on-black nylon and cotton, or in khaki with flashes of coated bouclé in sunblock-orange at the neck. A more orthodox jacket featuring rust silver on black stripes plus some shirts with distorted cuffs were, Li confessed, just a little inspired by the Hale school blazers he and his mates would wear any way except for how the school wished them to. A great technical smock top with flashes of that reddish orange was the latest installment in a series of collaborations Li has done with KTC, the Austrian-owned China-based outerwear specialist, and featured a square of the warped checkerboard pattern that elsewhere was printed on shirting and inlaid into jackets.

Li hasn’t gone all mambo—there were plenty of black and big outerwear pieces for avant-garde promenading—but it was great to seem him loosening up a little and letting in that light. Although an afterthought in this review, the womenswear pieces that will be released in parallel with the men’s seemed strong too.