Two days ago Feng Chen Wang was in Beijing to launch her second physical pop-up in as many months. Today she was back in Shanghai, the site of the first, which is still open to customers and doing well. COVID-19-wise, being in China, where Wang has been for most of the year, sounds pretty dreamy right now. As she said: “In most ways, it’s back to normal. We can walk around. Everything is fine. We don’t need to wear masks. But that’s inside China, and we cannot go to other countries because you always need to quarantine.”
Wang, a Royal College of Art and MAN (Fashion East) alum mainly based in London, has been using her time in China’s hard-won bubble of relative tranquillity to learn more about the fashion desires in her home market. She said: “They are looking for something special and different. Before, a lot of young customers were enjoying luxury brands—the brands whose products are the same all wherever you go in the world—and buying logos, big logos. But now, they are looking maybe for something more real, unique, and authentic.”
This suits Wang just fine. Her eye is rooted in asymmetry, deconstruction, and throwback shapes, and her process is rooted in traditional techniques and colors from her Fujian home province. This was inevitably a Zoom review, so Wang pushed a resist-dyed shirt up close to her laptop to demonstrate the idiosyncrasy in the process that ensures every garment is different. Similarly her acid-washed, white-dyed denim pieces—they looked snowcapped—offered an infinite variety of formation. The insertion of subtly tradition-riffing calligraphic motifs and hands-held prints, said the designer, was a nod to the increased importance of “human connectivity.” The fact that log-in issues meant she couldn’t connect to this Zoom until well after it was due to start underscored that. Wang is a smart and sincere designer who seems set to prosper mightily. That each season there are more and more women’s looks in these men’s look books is no accident; expect a full womenswear collection soon.
