Does fashion have the transformative strength to mend a broken heart? That was the question posed by Huishan Zhang with his darkly romantic Pre-Fall collection. Just as his newly opened London store, designed by Fran Hickman, explores ideas of equilibrium between East and West, and light and dark, so too do these heady, atmospheric clothes seem to suggest that you can’t have the purity of love without the corresponding darkness of heartbreak and betrayal.
A focus on the fragility of romance is not new in the work of the rising Chinese designer, who caters to ready-to-wear, demi-couture, and couture customers, but this season it brought a twilit mood even to the frothiest of red carpet confections. It’s little wonder the palette was so inky and iridescent: Zhang has been immersing himself in the cinematic world of film noir, and fell too for the 1960 French-Italian film Purple Noon, which is loosely based on Patricia Highsmith’s twisted tale of obsession, The Talented Mr. Ripley. But even when things fall apart emotionally, the Zhang woman is not one to let herself go. “She’s going through a heartbreak, but she still looks very elegant,” he said from his atelier, which is in the throes of a major renovation. “This is a woman who is being reborn after a relationship breakup.”
Zhang explored these emotional highs and lows with textural clothes that juxtapose soft silks and ostrich feathers with tough—and now completely vegan—leathers. “I don’t normally mix and match materials,” he explained. “It’s been interesting to see how fabrics work together when they are technically very different.” These experiments gave rise to some exquisite looks: tweed trenches cut with silk panels and sleeves; fitted tweed jackets with shearling peplums; and a deliciously vampy vegan leather coat with a dainty Chinese lace hem. One thing is clear: The power of these pretty pieces is not to be underestimated.