How well do you ever really know a city? Even the most treasured small towns of childhood are not without their secrets. Shanghai is young, by Chinese standards, and its position—perpetually perched on the edge of reinvention; one of the largest cities in the world in a nation that’s jockeying for a likely role as the next great superpower—makes it occasionally unrecognizable, even to its intimates. There can be something menacing about all that growth, according to Liu Wei, a Beijing-based artist whose work tends to fixate on the relentless, sometimes terrifying march of human progress. Max Mara had enlisted him for both a special capsule collection and to create the set design for its Pre-Fall 2017 spectacular set in Shanghai’s Exhibition Center.