FENG CHEN WANG CONTINUES EXPLORATION OF HUMAN CONNECTION FOR SPRING
Who is your other half? Is it a person? Is it your career? Or is it something else? These are the questions which are at the forefront of Feng Chen Wang’s mind for her spring/summer 2019 collection.
This season, the designer continues her exploration of human connection, though this time she looks inwards, not outwards, focusing on the things that ‘complete’ us.
‘Half’ is the word of the season, appearing in text on baseball caps, but in less literal ways too– throughout the collection, two items of clothing merge to become one. Shirts are draped on top of one another, while jackets, created as part of Wang’s ongoing collaboration with Levi’s, are layered too. Jeans have additional legs melded to them and the shoes (an iteration of Converse’s iconic Chuck Taylor All Star) see two pairs cut up and spliced together.
These designs are accompanied by some new additions to Wang’s work, such as suits and shirts, in addition to new outerwear styles, such as trench coats and t-shirts with panel details. Bags and jewelry take the form of hands, some holding hands – a universal signifier of connection – while a sculpture constructed from multiple hands stands erect in the center of the show space. Spring/summer 2019 also sees the introduction of the Feng Chen Wang women – the female counterpart to her male character.
This season, Wang was particularly inspired by diagrams mapping the increase and decrease in temperature throughout the human body as we experience different emotions. While love warms us all over, depression cools us, and anger ignites our head, upper chest and arms. Wang explores this phenomenon through PVC body pieces that refer to different emotions and the area they heat, and in hypercolor-‐style coats that also serve to illustrate this effect.
Alongside neutral tones, black, white and grey, crystal‐inspired shades of hot pink and cool blue flow throughout the collection, symbolizing love and hate, happiness and sadness, day and night, summer and winter – it’s the Feng Chen Wang yin and yang.
Photos by Dan Lecca
