Everybody hurts sometimes. And from the sounds of it, it’s been Jingwei Yin’s turn recently to endure one of life’s rough patches. Backstage, post-show, he told us: “This collection comes from a very personal experience. I had some troubles, struggles, for the last half year. I went through a lot of resistance and sometimes even [felt] like breaking apart, kind of. And I had this emotion during the whole development of this collection.”
Just what it was that hit Yin so hard, we were too polite to ask. On his smoke-fogged runway he had just done what all artists do: turned trauma into material. In a collection he entitled Radical Tenderness, the state of hyper-sensitivity that personal shock so often generates was finely translated into garments of mutedly profound color and acutely rendered texture, drape, and proportion.
The aura-emanating jagged spikes of his laser-cut cupro cuffs, collar pieces, and arm bands quivered with meaningful movement. Spiked-tip scalloped-cut fabric on drop waisted skirts was linked to longer hem-sections of lighter, more easeful material. Chunkily yarned, richly flecked, and purposefully frayed and holed knitwear was rolled and layered around the bodies beneath it with a defensive, sheltering abundance.
Opaque overdyed jersey with delicate blushes of color variation was cut into diagonally-paneled full length dresses under more powerfully assertive pieces. The lapels of cropped and colored evening jackets were cut to loop under the front of the garment and up again, protectively, at the chest. There was a beautifully statuesque dress in pale olive that draped up from the hips and down from the neckline to convene in a twisted knot at the pit of the stomach. Oversized moto jackets in leather, tailored jackets in silkily sheened corduroy, and action-shouldered 1980s-style leisure jackets looked like pieces to retreat in. Some corseted jackets were left open at the back, their hook-and-eye closures unattached to bare the garment beneath. The designer said he was driven in his designs to express the fascinating complexity of the women he works to dress.
There was an additional upside to working on this Oude Waag collection, Yin added: “I found out how to face it, how to go forward. There is a life flow. And then, actually you can find yourself more clearly.” And while it felt a little wrong to take pleasure from his pain, this was a compelling collection to watch.
