Ray Chu SS27 ‘Fans Only Club’ Brings Taiwan’s Sambucus Flower to London Fashion Week

Ray Chu presented Fans Only Club for Spring/Summer 2027 during London Fashion Week on 18 September, translating Taiwan’s Sambucus flower, locally known as 冇骨消, into a gender-fluid wardrobe of refined tailoring, translucent layers and body-conscious silhouettes. The collection uses the flower’s clustered white blossoms as both a visual reference and a metaphor for collective strength, extending that idea through original prints, crystal embellishment, wearable sculpture and technical summer fabrics.

A Taiwanese Botanical Reference

For SS27, founder and creative director Ray Chu looks to the Sambucus flower as a symbol of quiet resilience. Its small blossoms gather into dense, cloud-like clusters, giving the collection a structure based on the relationship between individual elements and the larger form they create together.

That logic appears across the clothes through fragmented botanical imagery, clustered surface treatments and controlled shimmer. Tailoring remains central to Chu’s design language, but the season introduces greater transparency and fluidity through sheer layers, relaxed shirting and adaptable separates designed to move across different bodies and identities.

Two prints give the collection distinct visual anchors. Taiwan Banana Club, first introduced for Pre-Spring 2027, returns with its colourful and nostalgic references to Taiwanese culture. A new Sambucus print takes a different approach, abstracting the flower’s clustered form into a contemporary botanical graphic.

Crystal, Jewellery and Wearable Sculpture

Selected looks incorporate Swarovski ReCreated™ Crystals, with support from Swarovski. According to the collection notes, the crystals are produced using crystal manufacturing breakage and are arranged in formations intended to suggest water droplets, shifting light and the clustered structure of the Sambucus flower.

The collection also introduces a collaboration with Japanese artist MOMOJIRI WORKS. Chu’s botanical references are reinterpreted through twisting lines, delicate structures and unusual proportions, resulting in pieces positioned between jewellery, object and wearable sculpture.

Rather than simply adding accessories to the collection, the collaboration develops the same source material through another creative language. Chu’s fluid tailoring and botanical graphics meet MOMOJIRI WORKS’ more playful approach to form, allowing the Sambucus motif to move from textile and embellishment into three-dimensional objects worn around the body.

Humour Enters the Collection

A contrasting element comes through Ray Chu’s presentation partnership with Hong Kong sexual-wellness brand Hello Nancy. Selected looks incorporated pieces from the brand’s Tennis Collection, including Ace and Smash, two tennis-inspired pleasure devices.

The partnership connects with the irreverent side of Chu’s Taiwan Banana Club imagery, where fruit, colour and sensuality are treated with humour rather than seriousness. Within a collection otherwise concerned with delicacy and controlled construction, the intervention introduces an intentionally playful relationship between fashion, body and object.

Technical Fabrics for Summer

Material experimentation continues through lightweight mint-fibre shirting and quick-drying Icy Grass jersey, introduced to bring breathability and technical comfort into the collection. The brand states that SS27 predominantly uses natural-fibre-based or environmentally conscious fabrics as part of Chu’s ongoing exploration of material responsibility, function and longevity.

The combination of precise tailoring and performance-led fabrics is particularly relevant to the collection’s broader construction. Instead of separating formal dressing from everyday comfort, Chu brings the two together through garments intended to retain structure while remaining adaptable and light enough for warmer conditions.

“The Sambucus flower does not need to be loud to be noticed. Each blossom is incredibly small, but when they bloom together, they create something strong and almost otherworldly. For me, that represents the quiet strength found in community, identity and the courage to grow in your own way,” said Ray Chu, Founder and Creative Director.

Across Fans Only Club, that contrast between subtlety and visibility becomes the organising principle. Botanical references are fragmented rather than reproduced literally, transparency is balanced by tailoring, and playful collaborations sit alongside more controlled construction. The Sambucus flower ultimately functions less as decoration than as a framework for thinking about how individual forms gain strength through connection.