“It’s a question of halves,” laughs London-based designer Feng Chen Wang after her incredible men’s show that played with the dualities within all of us. “What does a half mean? Is it a puzzle, or something more simple?” What this meant visually was one of Wang’s most successful collections to date, that spliced her eye for searing color with hybrid garments.
“Obviously, this became part of the design process,” she says, “taking two jackets and putting them together, cutting shoes in two and stitching them together, or taking two colorways, one cold and one warm. Two in one.” Wang’s jackets took a myriad of ombré colorways; a white trench with a gradient blue waist, a hot pink overcoat and the Levi’s collaboration denim jacket being highlights. The aforementioned shoes were in fact Converse’s Chuck Taylor All Stars, stitched together in a way that made them gloriously bulky. Alongside all the oversize shapes, models wore tiny shorts and PVC body pieces reminiscent of alien armor.
Wang notes that her best selling pieces are in the hypercolor shades she’s become so known for — gone are the days when black was the default shade for commercial pieces. Some of the most joyful looks featured huge, oversize hands caressing the models’ bodies. “It’s important to communicate with each other and talk about what halves can mean,” Wang says. “I used hands to represent this. Connecting each other… you can hold hands, but you can also fight!” Not that Wang is much of a fighter. “Open the door and let people know you can do whatever you want to do,” she says, surrounded by her incredible cast of iridescent models. “Wear whatever you want to wear!” After this convincing, endorphin rush of a show, we want to wear Feng Chen Wang.
