About the designer
Born in China, raised in Sweden, and now based in Paris, Louise Xin is a multi-award-winning fashion designer and artist, and the founder of Scandinavia's first rental-only, non-sale couture brand, Louise Xin Couture. She discovered the world of couture and began experimenting with upcycled materials in late 2019. During the pandemic in late 2020, she launched a rental-only model as a humble attempt to challenge existing consumption patterns and rethink customer behaviour.
With a passion for sustainability and a mission to create a circular brand, Xin soon ventured into humanitarian work. In the fall of 2021, she dedicated her debut fashion show to human rights—an act that gained worldwide viral attention and earned her international recognition. Within two years, she received multiple awards and nominations. In 2022, she was selected as a Sakharov Fellow by the European Parliament and made history by staging the first-ever fashion show inside the Parliament in 2023, raising awareness of forced labour and modern slavery in support of the then-EU proposal on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence and the Forced Labour Ban.
Extending beyond her engagement with labour rights, Xin’s work increasingly focuses on the preservation of cultural heritage and artisanal knowledge. She collaborates with artisans and marginalized communities worldwide to safeguard endangered textile traditions, integrating them into a contemporary context. Through creative storytelling and cross-cultural partnerships, she seeks to ensure that ancestral knowledge, artistry, and identity are not lost but honoured and carried forward in meaningful and innovative ways.
She has delivered lectures and talks for the United Nations, TEDx, Forbes, and Spotify, and collaborated with the Swedish Royal Opera, universities, fashion institutions, museums, art galleries, and luxury malls. Her work has been featured in over 100 international publications including Vogue, ELLE, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s Bazaar in more than 14 languages worldwide.
In late 2025, she co-founded the Open Story Foundation, an initiative connecting creative industries with humanitarian and environmental efforts. Positioned between culture, policy, and commerce, the foundation uses storytelling across cinema, art, fashion, and entertainment as a strategic tool to influence narratives, mobilize audiences, and accelerate systemic change.
As of 2026, Louise Xin Couture is entering a new phase—evolving beyond its initial rental-only couture model into a hybrid fashion system integrating rental, made-to-order, pre-order, and ready-to-wear. This evolution acknowledges the complexity of fashion ecosystems and reflects insights developed through years of engagement with human rights advocacy, labour rights, and policy work—recognizing that true circularity and cultural impact require multiple entry points.
This shift is not a compromise, but a progression. Rather than departing from its founding principles, the brand refines them—developing a more adaptive circular framework designed to extend reach, increase longevity, and align each product category with the most responsible form of distribution.
