Uma Wang (Self-Owned Label) (Q8027)
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Uma Wang (Self-Owned Label) is a fashion house from BOF.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Uma Wang (Self-Owned Label) |
Uma Wang (Self-Owned Label) is a fashion house from BOF. |
Statements
For spring, Uma Wang said she wanted to focus on what remains after everything extraneous is stripped away. Her main inspiration, she added, was the recent retrospective on Constantin Brancuși at the Centre Pompidou.“I loved what he did with different materials, putting together stone, marble and mirrors,” Wang offered backstage before the show. “The exhibition was so incredible, I immediately wanted to transpose it and find that balance, but then also something different with the details,” she said. Her goal, she added, was to pare back and approach clothing as if it were a sculpture or birds floating on mirror ponds.The lighting in the American Cathedral threw draped effects, unusual fabric treatments and glinting mirror accessories into dramatic relief. Some prints, including a floral from Wang’s early archives, looked as if they had been plucked from a French herbarium, but the designer left backs bare to amp up sensuality. “Showing skin is more feminine,” she noted.Sculptural silhouettes appeared to reinterpret toga styles to dramatic effect, or to splice a New Look-style peplum, held aloft with burgundy tulle, with a sleek black evening sheath. Textural effects included shiny laminates, waxing and jacquards treated inside out, their threads teased into shags. “I want people to see how beautiful the back is, it’s like an art piece,” Wang said. “I like an element of surprise, of doing something a little bit wrong. If everything is correct, that’s just boring.” Also new to her repertoire was an earthy, cocoa palette that the designer deemed adaptable to all seasons.Seated in the front row, Suzi de Givenchy described Wang as the epitome of the modern Chinese woman. “She's fierce and strong and really embracing what she sees as beauty, which is something you don’t really see that often,” she said. “Uma’s reserved, but when she speaks you can really feel her power.” The clothes, too, spoke volumes.
27 September 2024
Though there’s a strong undercurrent of nostalgia on the runways of late, Uma Wang said that she wanted to express ideas about the past in the most abstract way possible.“Normally I travel before a collection, but this time I wanted to let my customer travel with me,” she said backstage before her fall outing.Likening her process to the river of memory—from the Renaissance masters she favors to a stroll through a flea market or the imprint of a body on pillows—the designer described sampling fragments of the past and letting them flow into new ideas about the future.In a way, it was also about taking stock after 15 years in the business. “It’s all connected,” she offered, adding, “I also wanted to show that we don’t just do romantic long dresses; I wanted to take things forward with shapes and fabrics that have a strong personality. So it’s everything I’ve been and everything I still want to become.”Whereas in the past Wang has seized on a single inspiration, this season she wanted to focus just on silhouette, shape, and clothes. On the runway, a rich palette of lush-looking fabrics was worked into cocoon-like shapes—for example, in oversized coats and capes in black or antiqued gold and in jackets in patinated brocade or destroyed camouflage. The pillow idea manifested quite literally on a couple of numbers, including one that led a section of looks in the season’s agenda-setting burgundy. It appeared again on a chocolate-colored dress that seemed to be made of memory fabric, a trend that has been cropping up for both men and women this season.Clearly, Wang masters tailoring, but while many of these exaggerated shapes seemed at home amid the dramatic setting of the American Cathedral in Paris, what remains to be seen is how they will be revisited to fit the real world.
1 March 2024
Uma Wang is the best advocate for her wabi-sabi fashion proposal. Blessed with a relaxed sense of style that nevertheless spells polish, she always cuts an elegant figure when she appears at the end of the runway to take her bow. At today’s show, held in the 19th-century former headquarters of BNP Paribas bank, she looked characteristically at ease, dressed in a sloppy, paint-speckled silk shirt and faded, wide-leg pants, her glossy black hair bobbing as she fielded questions backstage. The location played into Wang’s fascination with dilapidation: BNP Paribas recently quit the building, leaving it with a forlorn air of humbled grandeur.For spring, she had been inspired by memories of Venice. A frequent traveler to Italy, where the Shanghai-based designer’s clothes are produced, Wang spoke backstage of the outlines of crumbling arches, the salty smell of the laguna, the water marks on the walls combining to create a Venice-specific mood of “melancholy.” “Everything is so humid there,” she said, “the colors are always changing, the walls are fading.” Her collection had that same poetic sense of attenuation, conveyed via midiskirts that were crinkled like discarded paper bags, in raw-edged brocade corset tops, in trailing silk dresses. Most interesting was a tapestry-like fabric that had been shredded in undulating waves, as though it had been hanging in a window at the Palazzo Fortuny, only to be attacked by a pack of moths, synchronized in their munching.Despite these experiments with fabric and form, Wang’s personal style lent the collection a welcome dose of wearability. Linen tailoring in faded cream and gray that was gathered at the hip had a slouchy appeal, as did an artsy handkerchief-hemmed silk shirt-and-skirt combination in moody blue (it helped that it was worn by the striking 56-year-old, gray-haired model Sylke Golding, who also walks for Balenciaga). Equally appreciated was the addition of pockets in a silk maxidress, which paired neatly with an oversize blazer. Grown-up fans of grunge will find much to like here.
28 September 2023
The Shanghai-based designer Uma Wang staged her last physical catwalk show in September 2019 at the American Cathedral in Paris, with a collection inspired by the instantaneous demise of the Roman city Pompeii. It proved eerily prescient: the Covid-19 pandemic has kept her, if not quite frozen in time, then stationed in China ever since, with fall 2023 constituting her first show for three-and-a-half years. She wanted to come back to the American Cathedral, she said, because it was a “meaningful way to start again.”Starting again meant employing new materials she had never previously explored. A fabric nerd, Wang’s background in knitwear, and later her experience working at a weaving factory in China, has heavily influenced her collections. “I start with fabric,” she shrugged, backstage after the show. “It’s the most emotional part. When I see the fabric, I have a feeling. I can’t start with shape or style.” She went big on texture for fall, embracing faux fur for the first time, presented alongside shiny coated linens she said had been “plastified,” thick boiled and felted wools, heavy velvet and tapestry-type cottons developed with her longstanding Italian suppliers. She also dabbled in denim, which was treated to give it a worn-in quality. “It’s the Uma Wang wabi-sabi mood, something broken, something from a vintage market, all the ideas I put together,” she said.Unhelpful though it is to point out, the photographs don’t do the fabrics justice—you need to see them up close. They gave the oversized double-breasted coats, the body-swamping gilets and the languid knit dresses a precious, romantic quality. That feeling was heightened by sculptural gold jewelry which Wang makes with a jeweler in Japan, with whom she’s collaborated for years. Comprising a series of hammered gold hoops which looped around the body standing proud from the torso and neck (something else that’s difficult to appreciate from photographs) they were inspired by the ancient cave paintings in Matera, Italy, where figures were depicted with haloes of gold around their heads. Though Wang didn’t want to veer into the religious, they injected the collection with a celestial energy. It’s certainly good to have her back in Paris.
3 March 2023
In fashion, as in politics these days, it often feels as if there are no adults in the room, leaving the void to be filled by spin doctors, some experts, and number crunchers. Welcome Uma Wang, whose spring collection was a show of strength inspired by nature.A bit about the designer: Born Wang Zhi in Hebei, China, she studied in Shanghai at Donghua University and at Central Saint Martins. Wang formed her own label in 2009 and became the first Chinese designer to show on the European fashion calendar, paving the way for others, and in 2022 became a member of La Chambre Syndicale de la Mode Feminine.Presented digitally, Wang’s spring 2023 collection, like many others, was inspired by the possibility of travel following lockdowns, and the force and magnetic pull of nature. The designer experienced that firsthand during a recent visit to North Africa.The neutral palette conjured the serene eternity of desert sands; coffee dye gave an earthiness to some of the materials. The second look was created from one length of a metal and cotton fabric that resembles tree bark. Sheer nylon was used, said Wang on a call, to evoke “a white cloud in the sky.” Just as Wang harnessed different natural elements—sky and earth, for example—so she combined menswear touches with soft draping,flou, and structure.This collection read as mature as opposed to trendy because of the clarity of Wang’s vision, which is largely derived from her passion for materials. The designer works closely with Italian mills creating incredible, often textural fabrics, which help to inform the silhouettes. For spring, Wang borrowed from the world of interiors a frayed cotton meant to evoke a woman wearing something she found at an antiques market. This amazing textile spoke to the “undone and distressed” themes of the season, but more so to the feeling of connection to history and culture that informs Wang’s work. There was an ’80s boldness to menswear-inspired coats, jackets, and sleeves, for example. The square-toe shoes were inspired by those worn during the Ming Dynasty. The styling of the necklaces and hats, which veered toward the appropriative, tripped up a narrative that otherwise felt like a true fusion of elements relating to culture, history, and gender forged into something new. A geometric pyramid pattern could have been a reference to African textile traditions or Secessionist ones.
In her show notes, Wang wrote of nature existing beyond boundary and taboo; she associates wilderness with freedom (mobile and spiritual). The humility one feels in the face of the natural world finds a parallel in the designer’s respect for textiles and craft, but otherwise this collection, which showcased Wang’s formidable talents, celebrated the power of a woman, giving her the option to stand strong, proud, free with the sturdiness of a tree or the gentleness of a cloud.
29 September 2022