Feng Chen Wang moved her runway to London this season after showing in New York of late. With that relocation arrived a slightly upgraded meter of clarity for this designer; her Fall collection, which was inspired by her mother and her two siblings, had a steady enough appeal. It wasn’t 100 percent good, and she still doesn’t have an immediately recognizable aesthetic signature, but there were bright spots nonetheless.
These came mainly via painterly lotus and space-dyed motifs. The lotus served to symbolize the designer’s mother (having three children in China when Wang was born was illegal, and her mother sometimes had to hide her pregnancies by dipping low into a local river in Fujian, her home province). The flower looked pretty when screened onto a corduroy shirt and cotton sweatpants. Lotus petals were also imagined as sculpted jackets, the most interesting of which was an armor-like icy pink parka. A watercolor scheme synced with this vibe, too, surfacing as washed-out tie-dyes in a series of separates later on.
Where Wang faltered, as many do, was in conceptualization—and she overdid it at times. Coats that physically connected between two of the models (one would assume they were linked to represent sibling-hood) were silly and out of line with the cleanliness elsewhere; likewise with hooded puffer scarves (or were they capes?). Sporty and serene—this is where she succeeded today.
