About REN CHI | Fashion Designer Ren Pei

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REN CHI

Our atelier operates as a laboratory of alchemical craft, where ancient techniques meet contemporary urgency. Based in Beijing, we exist in the space between memory and becoming—where garments serve as vessels for transformation, bridging the distance between who you were and who you're growing into.

At REN CHI, we only choose natural fabrics and believe in slow fashion that ensures you can wear each piece for the rest of your life. We source the finest French linen, Italian wool, premium cotton, and traditional Chinese silk. Through our exclusive embroidery and hand-dyeing processes, each item becomes truly one-of-one—the natural variations in our dyeing techniques combined with handmade construction guarantee that no two pieces are ever identical.

We believe in rebuilding the relationship between you and your inner child—that luminous being who once knew how to exist without armor, who could smile the purest smile without worrying about another boy or girl looking at you wrong. We create for the moment when you remember what it felt like to move through the world unguarded, when wonder lived closer to the surface and authenticity was not a choice but a birthright. Each piece becomes autobiography written not in words, but in thread, dye, and the courage to transform.

Ren Pei

Designer and Creative Director of REN CHI. Based in Fengtai, Beijing, China.

"I create for those who understand that getting dressed is a daily act of becoming. Each piece whispers: you are allowed to change, you are allowed to grieve what you've outgrown, you are allowed to emerge as someone new. Fashion becomes autobiography—written not in words, but in thread, dye, and the courage to transform."

the unraveling →

Names as Destiny

rèn chí

任驰

I was born Ren Chi—a name that meant to run freely, to gallop without restraint. But a sickly child's body betrayed this promise. While other children ran, I wilted. While they played, I fought for breath.

huó fó

活佛

A living Buddha, keeper of ancient wisdom, read my spirit like an open book. Among the five elements that govern all life—metal, wood, water, fire, earth—I was missing earth. Tu, the foundation. Without it, I was unmoored, my immune system as fragile as paper in rain.

jīn

金

mù

木

shuǐ

水

huǒ

火

tǔ

土

the dance incomplete

péi

培

So they buried Chi and gave me Pei—earth embedded in the character itself, tu as the radical that would anchor me to life. My body healed. My lungs learned to breathe. But something else was lost in that transformation. The artist-child who saw colors that had no names, who drew worlds into existence with wild abandon—that child disappeared with the name.

shī qù

失去

For decades, I carried this grief. Art became a ghost I couldn't touch. Creation felt like betrayal of the practical life that had saved me. I walked through the world healthy but hollow, grateful yet grieving, always wondering about the roads untaken by the child who could no longer run free.

But time teaches us that nothing is ever truly lost—only transformed. Every ending births a beginning. Every burial makes space for new growth. Now I understand: I needed both names to become whole. Pei gave me the foundation to survive. Chi gives me the courage to run toward who I'm meant to become.

the child and the adult are both real

This brand is my integration song. Every piece holds space for all the selves we've been and all the selves we're becoming. We are walking archives of transformation—each scar a story, each choice a thread in the endless weaving of who we are.

When you wear Ren Chi, you wear the understanding that identity is not fixed but fluid. You honor both the practical and the dreamer, the survivor and the visionary, the grounded and the running-free. You dress not just for today, but for all the versions of yourself that brought you here.

yuán mǎn

圆满

Wholeness isn't the absence of breaking.
It's the courage to gather all the pieces
and call them beautiful.