My Shanghai: Fashion, Architecture and More

Discover Shanghai’s fashion, architecture and a city that never stops reinventing itself

Shanghai is a city I’m never quite finished with. Every time I return, something has shifted: an old building restored, a brilliant restaurant appearing down a lane, a fashion store taking over a former villa, an extraordinary contemporary interior hiding behind an unassuming façade. Yet old Shanghai is still there. That collision is what I love.

Increasingly, historic buildings aren’t simply being preserved as museum pieces. Shikumen become hotels, villas become fashion stores, warehouses become galleries, industrial buildings become creative spaces. The old buildings are being asked to live again.

THE STAY

Where you stay in Shanghai can completely change your experience of the city. My two favourites could hardly be more different. On the one hand, Capella draws you into the intimate, low-rise Shanghai of lanes, tiled roofs and shikumen. On the other hand, The Edition throws you upwards into the lights, movement and extraordinary verticality of the city. I loved them both for precisely that reason.

CAPELLA SHANGHAI, JIAN YE LI

At first, walk through the gates and Shanghai seems to change volume. Capella inhabits Jian Ye Li, a beautifully restored 1930s shikumen neighbourhood of narrow brick lanes, courtyards and tiled roofs. In particular, the wonderful old water tower rises above them, glowing red after dark, a beacon over the rooftops.

My villa climbed over several floors to its own roof terrace. Sitting up there among the tiled roofs, that red tower illuminated above the lanes, while one of the world’s great megacities continued beyond the walls, was rather magical.

And eat at Le Comptoir de Pierre Gagnaire. Yes, Gagnaire is French, but that feels entirely right in Shanghai, an international city for generations. Here in the Former French Concession, with French-Mexican chef Ramses Navarro heading the kitchen, it feels like another layer in Shanghai’s cosmopolitan story.

THE SHANGHAI EDITION

Almost the opposite Shanghai. At Yone, a contemporary Japanese restaurant high above the city, Shanghai’s international character feels completely natural. The food looks outward just as the room does, with a Japanese menu shaped around rice and a drinks programme developed with Shingo Gokan.

Then there are those extraordinary triangular windows, slicing the Pudong skyline into cinematic frames. The Huangpu alive below with boats moving in both directions, their wakes breaking up the reflections of the city lights. Across the river, the skyline flashes and shifts as dusk falls, while the Oriental Pearl runs through its changing sequence of colour, glowing differently from one minute to the next.

Nothing stays still. The river moves, the boats move, the reflected lights move with them, and Shanghai transforms by the minute. Then that fabulous spiral staircase sweeps upwards towards Punch Room and its great long bar. Go higher still to ROOF in the late afternoon and stay as daylight disappears and the city switches itself on.

THE BUND

Staggering in scale, the Bund combines architecture, history, people-watching, the incessantly busy Huangpu, and surreal views across the water. Turn one way and you’re looking at Shanghai’s great early-20th-century banks, hotels and trading houses. Even more so, across the water rises one of the world’s great futuristic skylines.

In particular, the Oriental Pearl Tower stands out. Strange, audacious and, to me, incredibly beautiful. There’s something mesmerising, almost meditative, about watching it across the water as its colours slowly shift and change. Walk the Bund twice, in daylight and at dusk.

THE FORMER FRENCH CONCESSION

Give me a Sunday, and this is where I’ll be. To begin with, visit the wonderfully ship-shaped Wukang Mansion and walk beneath the plane trees. Villas, Art Deco apartment buildings, shikumen, walls, gates, Wukang and Anfu Roads.

The best way to discover Shanghai is to walk with no agenda. Down a leafy street, through an alleyway, around a corner, and suddenly there it is. Discover an old villa, a hidden courtyard, a staircase, or a shop you hadn’t meant to find.

Shopping here feels less like shopping and more like an architecture and design tour. You move through the original rooms of beautifully restored buildings, noticing the light, materials, furniture, graphics and details as much as the clothes. The pleasure is in the discovery. Some spaces are so beautifully resolved, so layered and complete, you feel you could quite literally move straight in.

LA MAISON DE FAMILLE LONGCHAMP

Longchamp’s extraordinary Shanghai “family home” inhabits a historic villa and barely behaves like a shop. Living room, dining room, library, games room, dressing room, café and garden. Fashion and objects are folded into a domestic interior.

In fact, the architecture is half the reason to go, and the interiors are fabulous. Room after room, everything is beautifully curated, layered with furniture, art, lighting and objects. You want to linger in every one.

CHLOE CHEN

Another favourite. Fashion, furniture, art and home collide inside an old Shanghai house. It feels less like conventional retail than wandering through the rooms of an extremely stylish collector.

JISIFANG, PANLONG TIANDI

Another shop I could happily have moved into. Neri&Hu have built a beautiful white-oak house within a house, its pitched roof, exposed structure and handmade ceramic floors creating something almost elemental. The idea is based on the Primitive Hut, architecture stripped back to shelter and material, which suits JISIFANG’s natural linen clothing perfectly.

Next door, its sister store Woven Moonlight becomes the opposite: a rough concrete cave. Hut and cave, fashion and architecture. Completely simple, but extraordinarily beautiful.

DUOZHUAYU / DÉJÀ VU SECOND HAND STORE

Brilliant second-hand fashion and books. I spotted an immaculate Comme des Garçons jacket for around £200 and immediately wanted to go through every rail. And then there’s the wonderfully bonkers cat vending machine, because, well, Shanghai.

FOTOGRAFISKA SHANGHAI

One of my favourite discoveries. The photography is reason enough, but I loved the entire place. Exhibitions, books, objects, fabulous shop and café-bar. Its position beside Suzhou Creek matters too: old industrial Shanghai being absorbed into the city’s contemporary cultural life.

MI SHANG PRADA RONG ZHAI

A magnificent historic mansion restored by Prada, now home to Mi Shang, conceived with Wong Kar-wai. It feels appropriately cinematic. Reflections, rich woods, velvet, glass and old Shanghai glamour seen through a distinctly contemporary lens. It’s another example of what the city does so well. Heritage made relevant rather than embalmed.

1933 OLD MILLFUN

Originally a slaughterhouse, this extraordinary concrete labyrinth of ramps, bridges, thick walls and curving corridors is unlike anything else.

Today creative businesses and events occupy parts of it, but the architecture is the reason to go. I loved sauntering through those heavy industrial corridors, and meeting the cats that seem to have quietly claimed the place as their own.

OCCHIO

A perfect example of the way Shanghai layers old and new. International lighting sits inside historic Shanghai architecture, with a beautifully restrained contemporary interior inserted into the original shell. Meanwhile, old brick, original proportions and character remain intact. In contrast, precision lighting, clean lines and immaculate detailing give the space its contemporary edge. It feels less like a showroom than a piece of adaptive reuse you happen to be able to shop in.

PENICILLIN SHANGHAI

One of my favourite Shanghai discoveries. Part cocktail bar, part workshop, part mad-scientist’s laboratory. Fermentation, preservation, upcycling and closed-loop thinking become part of the creative process rather than an earnest sustainability lecture. Clever, experimental and enormous fun.

MAISON DONGLIANG

One of my revelations. A historic villa filled with a formidable fashion: The Row, Lemaire, Dries Van Noten, Alaïa, Phoebe Philo, Maison Margiela and Our Legacy, alongside contemporary Chinese designers.

But it’s the mixing that makes it. Clothes with antique Chinese furniture, ceramics, fragrance and collectible design. Fashion in conversation with architecture, furniture and objects.

SATURDAY NIGHT

Shanghai is a city where I’d move around. Start at Penicillin. Pony Up, on Jinxian Road, had only just reopened after its renovation that Saturday, giving it that particular energy of a place coming back to life. Then there’s Bar Leone Shanghai, which is the younger sibling of the Hong Kong original. It is on my list rather than somewhere I’m pretending I’ve been.

And Bastard. I knew about it, passed it twice, and simply ran out of time. Frustrating, because everything about it feels exactly like the Shanghai I’m interested in. Tiny, hidden at the end of a residential lane, and completely plugged into the city’s food, fashion and creative worlds.

In April 2026 it catered the dinner following Glenn Martens’ debut Maison Margiela collection, the house’s first show outside Paris since 1988. For 150 guests, a Shanghai longtang was reconstructed using materials salvaged from genuine demolition sites. Old shopfronts, apartment doors, signs and exposed wiring, then set with immaculate white-clothed tables and masses of calla lilies.

Old Shanghai wasn’t prettified. It became the setting for something completely contemporary. I missed Bastard this time. Next time, and there is definitely a next time.

WHAT KEEPS ME COMING BACK?

The contradictions are everywhere: old and new, East and West, intimacy and monumental scale. A narrow shikumen lane sits beneath a super-tall tower. Historic villas are filled with directional fashion. Meanwhile, a former slaughterhouse is now inhabited by creatives and cats. And then, there is a tiny restaurant catering to Maison Margiela.

Shanghai doesn’t feel preserved in aspic. The old buildings are being asked to live again. And perhaps that’s why I never quite finish with this city. There is always another lane to wander down, another old door standing open, another extraordinary room waiting behind it.

IF SHANGHAI WERE A SCENT?

White magnolia and osmanthus, tea, rain on warm stone, old cedar and a faint metallic trace of the Huangpu. Floral at first, darker as it settles. Old Shanghai and new Shanghai in the same bottle.

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