The most photographed dress at the 83rd Venice Film Festival this week was not a European one. On September 8 the cast of Dear You appeared together on the festival’s red carpet: director Lan Hongchun with producer Zheng Xuanxuan and the leads Li Sitong, Wang Yantong and Wang Xiaohui. It was the group’s first appearance together at an overseas film festival, and the first international festival red carpet for the three actors who play Nanzhi, Shurou and Musheng. Since its release on April 30 the film has taken more than 2 billion yuan at the box office, a run that has carried three performers who were paid tens of thousands of yuan into the red carpet circuit of one of Europe’s three major festivals.
Wang Xiaohui, who plays Shurou, wore the Summer 2026 collection of the Chinese designer label M essential: a gold Neo-Chinese gown with a standing collar, a diagonal placket closed with Pankou, a dark-pattern jacquard across the body and a full skirt in the same tone. Her hair was gathered into a braided bun pinned with a single hairpin, and she finished the look with pearl drop earrings, several strands of pearl bracelet stacked on one wrist and silver shoes. The register is gentle, classical and unhurried, and Chinese social media reached for a period reference, describing her as someone who had stepped out of a Republican-era painting.
Getty Images’ official frames made the argument for her. Standing center in a field of black gowns, the gold dress reads as the only warm object in the picture. Under high-resolution unretouched lenses she wore almost no makeup, no false lashes and close to her natural skin texture, which drew the line “a lotus rising from clear water.” The phrase “Li Sitong and Wang Xiaohui, Getty raw photos” trended on Chinese platforms. One widely shared comment noted that Wang Xiaohui works without an agency team and wore a Chinese designer gown costing a few thousand yuan to an international red carpet, adding that M essential is a well-known domestic designer brand but sits far below Dior or Chopard on price.
The other two leads took different routes to the same idea. Li Sitong, who plays Nanzhi, chose a black suit from Dior’s Fall/Winter 2026 collection: a V-neck, a front placket trimmed with Chinese Pankou, braided cord at the trouser hem and platform shoes, finished with the CHAUMET Josephine white egret necklace. The effect is crisp and severe, and the pairing of Western tailoring with a Chinese fastening drew comments about how well she wears a suit. Wang Yantong, who plays Musheng, wore a black velvet shawl-collar suit with a white dress shirt and white bow tie, adding Chopard ICE CUBE studs and ring and the Alpine Eagle watch with its green dial.
Photographs were not the only images the trio produced. Before the premiere they shot a magazine feature from a gondola on the Grand Canal, Wang Xiaohui with two braids standing at the bow, Li Sitong with a single braid in a white shirt and long white skirt seated quietly on the boat. Fans have taken to describing each of the group’s appearances as an unusually complete continuation of the film’s story off screen.
Fashion commentary has settled on Wang Xiaohui’s look as the cast’s most deliberate piece of cultural export. At international events the default is a Western gown; she wore a Chinese designer’s Neo-Chinese dress, where the gold carries both celebration and an Eastern warmth, the standing collar and Pankou are recognizably Chinese, and the cut and fabric are contemporary. The shift it marks is worth naming plainly: Chinese actors once competed to wear Western luxury houses on international red carpets, and a growing number now wear Chinese designers and Neo-Chinese silhouettes to carry Eastern aesthetics onto those stages. That movement, from domestic screens to a Venice red carpet, is what the commentariat is reading as a sign of where Chinese film and Chinese taste are heading.
