Next year, Feng Chen Wang will celebrate her label’s 10th anniversary. That milestone, plus her habit of drawing inspiration from techniques of the past, pushed the designer to focus on what she thinks the future should look like.
“I do tend to really look at timeless things, and also threading things through time,” she offered backstage before her show. “I’m always looking for a new way to pull together all the things I love—ancient artifacts, my sculpture, my clothes.”
One way she did that was to unveil a new capsule line called féng—a word that encompasses the Chinese words for “meet” and “sew.” An homage to high craftsmanship, these entirely handmade pieces played up visible stitching, appliqué, embroidery and inside-out constructions.
Wang described her work for spring as “weaving together the texture of the years, in an easy way.”That might mean picking up on the cracks or patina of ceramics and rendering them in textile, or taking pajama-light silk and using a 2,000 year-old ancestral technique to tug tiny threads so they pucker just so, before being dyed denim blue. There seemed to be a new maturity—or perhaps a newfound confidence—in laddered openwork polo knits and suiting with raw edges. Aqua denim was hand-dyed to mimic the ribbing on plants.
Speaking of nature, Wang worked bamboo into clever mesh tops or cute little leather-free handbags, also under the féng label. A collector of ancient things and crafts, she wrapped up amphorae like handbags, and sent them out tucked under models’ arms not as something precious, but with the ease of a football. Once again, the designer rocked out on futuristic footwear: like moon boots from a sci-fi fantasy, towering shells slipped over UGG Tasman shoes that were finished with imperfections recalling the crackled finish of fired porcelain.
Wang often says she wants to create a new kind of bridge between East and West, past and future. With this collection, she seemed to make strides in speaking to a broader audience.
