Angel Chen (Q2648)
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Angel Chen is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Angel Chen |
Angel Chen is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Angel Chen’s fall collection came together in a uniquely nomadic way. Finally able to do a long wished-for trip to the Inner Mongolia—her fiancé is from the region—Chen and her team set up a movable studio and began exploring Inner Mongolian towns. “We drove to one place, we settled down, and we found the [local artisans] and worked on the collection together, the whole team,” she explained over Zoom. “It was a very dramatic experience for me because everything was made by someone that is very down to earth, they protect the environment and they love their farm, the place where they grew up. It’s like making the product right inside your home.”The result is a stunning collection, photographed across different Inner Mongolian landscapes, that brings together Chen’s exacting vision for silhouette and texture, with intricate local craftsmanship. The pieces run the gamut from the simple, like workwear-ready button-down shirts and jumpsuits hand-embroidered with cowrie shells, to ponchos, jackets, and hoodies in intricate woven tapestries featuring an image of a horse. A blanket made from a sweeping image of a landscape was fashioned into a sleeveless dress with a high collar, its bold green and orange matching the Inner Mongolian steppe.Elsewhere, a pair of wide-leg jeans with a ruffled and shaggy fur detail at the waist were cuffed extra wide—so wide that there are buttonholes to hold the cuff in place—showing a stenciled pattern painted underneath. Worn with a baby tee and a boho-style white felted coat with shaggy fur trim, it had a certain kind of ease yet also a glamour, like something Rihanna might wear. A quilted oversized jacket and trousers made of intricately woven jacquards and brocades likewise had real-life superstar appeal. Also special was a pair of dragon-printed jeans made from a special velvet denim developed by Chen. While it’s obvious that some of the pieces will not be available for wide retail distribution, the collection as a whole is infused with the designer’s point of view, connecting traditional artisanal traditions with modern silhouettes and, in the process, ensuring that these important crafts do not disappear.
21 October 2022
The first thing Angel Chen said over Zoom after her spring 2022 show in Shanghai was: “It is my dream. I have wanted to do this performance show for my whole life.”Staged in the West Bund Dream Center, the show brought together dancers—led by Ma Xiaolong, Zhang Yashu, and the Shanghai-based Indian artist Amey Sali—for a performance that told the story of a love between two dancers. Chen was inspired by traditional Chinese stories as well as films like 2000’sCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragonand 2002’sHerofor both her collection and the show.The season marks a pivot from the luxurious streetwear she typically designs for something deeply rooted in historically Asian silhouettes. Long robe-like coats with wide sleeves and curved backs in lightweight silks, silk organzas, and cupro make up the bulk of the collection. Some are sheer, embroidered with phrases written in Chinese characters; Chen translated: “When the stars start to rise, and when the spring becomes autumn, and when the winter becomes summer—no matter which season we meet, I will always love you.” Others are hand-painted by Chen and Sali using techniques from his art practice, dipping, marbling, swirling, and blotting dyes and paints into the fabric.“Amey’s art is big and spectacular, so I didn’t cut small shapes,” Chen said. Even if the overall effect of her silhouettes is one of whooshing and swirling, she’s tailored each piece to be slightly different, either with large folded pleats at the back, high slits to allow various ways of belting at the sides, or cascades of ties down the front. Underneath, Chen has created hand-bleached and dyed oversized sets and several delicate ballerina dresses. (Before she was a designer, Chen trained in ballet.) “It’s really simple and clean shapes,” she continued.As our call concluded Chen reflected on the spirit of Shanghai during Fashion Week. “It feels like a new city,” she said of the post-COVID mood and subsequent influx of designers and uninhibited ideas. Chen has been one of Shanghai’s boldest, most thoughtful designers for a long time. Hopefully the new energy in China brings even more attention to her work.
18 October 2021
At Angel Chen’s runway show in Shanghai, models crept out of a black-painted bamboo thicket. When we speak over Zoom shortly after, she smiles at the scene, describing them as “little creatures.” Covered in shaggy neon shearlings and voluminous down-filled coats, Chen’s models do have the appearance of superhuman life forms. Toeing that line between fantastical and practical is one of her strengths as a designer, and while customers might not wear two shearling bulb hats one atop the other the way Chen styled them on the runway, it’s hard not to appreciate her willingness to push herself to seek out new silhouettes and shapes.As muse this season, the inimitable Chinese American actress Anna May Wong helped push Chen into new dimensions. While fashion has flirted with Wong’s life and glamour in the past, Chen refuses to see the actress as the elegant, aloof figure she is often thought to be by Western eyes. “She was fierce,” Chen says. “Like a dragon.” Wong’s 1931 filmDaughter of the Dragonwas a special point of reference, with stills from the movie laser-printed on denim. Bridging Chinese and Western culture has always been at the heart of Chen’s work, but it takes on a special significance now as hate crimes against Asian Americans are at a high. By showing Wong’s strength, Chen shows her own: As a designer she is also fierce, innovative, and boundary breaking.This season, she has worked to perfect the multipurpose garments she introduced about a year ago when she styled a jacket flipped upside down on her runway. Her Canada Goose collaboration for spring 2021 continued the idea, and now for fall 2021 she has built a vertical switch into every garment. A bomber jacket with neon yellow ruffles at its hem flips to become a cute cropped version with the ruffle framing the model’s face. A cloud-like puffa turns upside down with a giant fold-over collar. The most wearable version might be a cargo jacket with two dual collars, dual pockets, and dual snaps that can be rotated on a 180-degree angle so seamlessly, you can’t even tell which way is “right.” Are customers wearing Chen’s pieces upside down? “Not really,” she says, but with her many new innovations, it’s hard to imagine they won’t try.That multifunctional spirit carries throughout the entire collection. Hand-crocheted tops in acid green with small flowers and woolen fringe are pulled down and layered over skirts.
A full-skirt dress in “wet dye” tie-dye—made from the same technique as Raf Simons’s first couture dresses for Dior—are made from memory nylon so the wearer can fluff out the skirt or crunch it into small pleats. After laser printing images of Wong and dragons onto denim, Chen and her team hand-bleached each piece to create an abstract print. It will pose a small problem at production; her entire studio was covered with bleach experiments for weeks before reaching the final product. But there is no question Chen will make sure the production run retains every bit of specialness as her show pieces. She’s a designer that leaves no seam unconsidered—hers are neon green this season, some even with dragons from her hometown temple embroidered in.
12 April 2021
Angel Chen found a kindred spirit in painter Jiajia Wang, whose lively and kinetic works feature large cartoon eyes at their center. On a video call from her showroom in Shanghai, Chen explained that while she didn’t know Wang when they studied at Central Saint Martins together, she felt the works embodied the “Angel Chen spirit”—something fun and celebratory that bridges Eastern and Western cultures. Chen transformed Wang’s pink and blue paintings into prints, sometimes rendered in all-over sequins and adorned with additional crystals for a shimmering, appropriately cartoonish effect. His multicolor works became a supersized print used on camp shirts and a pleated gown, the paint strokes visible.The most exciting propositions in Chen’s new collection have to do with form. She’s used a recycled nylon and memory polyester mix to create ruffles that crunch up and incorporated drawstrings into voluminous capes and utility trousers so silhouettes can shift from ballooning to slim. A collaboration with Canada Goose birthed a series of ingenious outerwear pieces that can be worn upside down, transforming from a boxy cropped shape to a bulbous cocoon. Chen began working with the company in February, visiting its headquarters just before COVID-19 shut down borders. On our video call, she showed off a neon pink anorak she’d styled into a bustier. Chen’s hybridized garments were already eye-catching, but in “these times” they’re bold and versatile in winning combination—especially when paired with her clunky boots with “dragon teeth” soles.
15 October 2020