At a regular edition of Shanghai Fashion Week, CT Liu’s show for CPlus Series takes a headlining spot. But this was no regular SHFW: A slimmer lineup of presentations meant that designers like Liu traded the runway for the showroom, shifting their focus to commercial offerings in order to weather the economic storm ahead.

Liu makes proper fashion show clothes—billowy dresses, shimmering frocks, an evening style or two—so the idea of presenting via lookbook was not particularly enticing. But being a good sport, he took the challenge as an opportunity to do more with less, shooting this set of images at his showroom space in between market appointments and playing up his styling—a mix of street style-ready maximalism and peak 2000s American Apparel-era playful deviousness. With their glittery faces, his models look like aliens or fairies or extras in a sci-fi film. Even if there was a sense that he was compensating for his absence from the catwalk, he made up for it with the well-roundedness of his output. Be it a skirt suit, a sparkly frock, or a pair of gray sweatpants, all of it had a clarity about who the person wearing it could be.

The designer explained at a walkthrough that he had no lofty concept or multilayered inspiration. The collection was, rather, an exercise in making some good, fun, sellable clothes—as noble a quest as any. While there was no shortage of the club-ready, going-out pieces Liu excels at, he made a good argument for the way in which his clothes can adapt to the daytime. “She’s the boss, but is more likely to make a deal in a Y2K look than in a suit,” he joked. In the mix were sweaters and knits, some with draped collars, others fuzzy and shaggy, and still more with sharp, tailoring-like shoulders, as well as balloon-hemmed blouses, separates covered in sheer sequins, and painterly florals on a button-down and on a shearling jacket. In a season of corp-core Liu made a solid case for retaining a point of view while dressing for the office and beyond.