Haizhen Wang staged a memorable return to the runway at Shanghai Trend Week final October with one of many week’s most partaking collections, so it was a shock when his identify was absent from the autumn season lineup this previous March.
Like lots of his colleagues in China and throughout the globe, Wang is going through challenges working an impartial label. “I had some points after final season,” stated the designer, reporting that an inner shuffle along with his employees, along with slower gross sales (in step with lots of his friends in Shanghai), compelled him to delay this fall assortment. “I had to concentrate to managing the enterprise,” he added. Now, Wang is rethinking his tempo: “I felt so drained after final season and after the pandemic, and I needed to take the time to pay attention in actual design and in creating strategies.”
Whereas he’s presenting this assortment barely off-schedule, he hopes to return to an everyday cadence in October, along with his enterprise again so as. To perform this, he put collectively a tighter, concept-driven lineup to tell his business assortment, and has enlisted a brand new crew to assist him develop a digital direct-to-consumer technique on T-Mall. DTC is the transfer with designers of late, and it’s one thing that Wang is relying on to assist reinvigorate his enterprise.
As for the gathering itself, Wang is a deft technical designer who totally enjoys making garments. This was on show in a lineup that borrowed liberally from Madame Grès (many pictures of her work appeared on Wang’s temper board), with a sprinkle of the late ’80s and ’90s within the silhouettes. “The concept was to construct a construction across the physique and begin pleating and layering by hand, specializing in the hip and waist and constructing out the silhouette with padding the place wanted,” he stated. A trio of fabulous draped little black clothes can be straightforward hits along with his extra upscale clients, whereas the playful criss-cross halter neck particulars on slips and bodysuits will communicate to a digitally savvy viewers. That is the place expertise issues: Wang is weathering a storm, however he’s proven that he can, when want be, do extra with much less.
