Chinese designer Zhu Chongyun talks about plans for Krizia fashion label

At Milan Fashion Week in March, at a packed presentation on the edge of Milan's Giardini Pubblici, the fashion crowd crammed into the darkened, futuristically set venue. They were all curious to see what a Chinese designer would do with Krizia - one of the labels that, together with Versace and Armani, established Milan as the Italian powerhouse of fashion in the 1980s and 1990s.

Zhu Chongyun, a successful self-made woman who is chairman of Shenzhen Marisfrolg Fashion Co (she has a Forbes estimated net worth of US$1.3 billion) and a designer of some 20 years' experience, bought Krizia early last year for what was reported to be about US$35 million.

Shenzhen-based Zhu is one of China's wealthiest entrepreneurs as well as an accomplished designer. She marked her first collection with a show based on the 1972 Russian art house sci-fi film , which mixes past with present and has a theme of rebirth. Models emerged from fibreglass cocoons into rays of light - a metaphor for the rebirth of the brand.

Dressed simply for her design debut for the label in a minimalist floor-length black dress and glasses, Zhu says she aims to recapture the spirit of Krizia and that the DNA of the brand wouldn't change. "She is independent, very strong and a very modern woman with lots of self-confidence," she added.

Zhu's designs featured the long dark silhouettes, black leather and jodhpur-shaped trousers indicative of the founder Mariuccia Mandelli's collections for the label, and also the animal's eye talisman present in every Krizia collection - reinterpreted on this occasion as an outline or pupil on futuristic-looking white capes and coats. There were shimmering jacquard coats and dresses, suggesting the direction Zhu is heading with the collection, but only a few examples of the asymmetric sweaters that recall Mandelli's personal passion for knitwear.