December 16, 2025 |
“I look back and feel as if I have always been heading towards this point,” says Robert Wun, 34, after a year that saw him shine on the Paris haute couture schedule. On the morning of his July show, Wun transported his audience from the bright summer sunshine of the City of Light to the world of his imagination. Operatic in scope, surreal in style and delirious in effect, this is a place where striking sculptural silhouettes, splattered with blood-red beading, emerged like a fashion fever dream from a pitch-black catwalk.
The beautiful and bizarre are bedfellows in Wun’s world. A huge satin duvet cape came with bloody crystal hand prints. Several looks sported mysterious mannequin arms holding or framing gowns and Wun’s signature spliced, cut-away tailoring. The bride, who traditionally closes a couture show, had a mysterious veiled sprite perched on her head.
“I believe in doing a proper showcase, like what McQueen used to do in the early 2000s, where people go to a show and feel lost in time. They are not going to be reminded of reality. Music, model choices, clothing: everything needs to be perfect. That’s the whole beauty of escapism in fashion. And I wanted to achieve that,” says the designer from his London studio.
Behind it all is Wun’s fascination with what it means to dress up, the ritual of transformation and what it hides or reveals of the person. His work explores, “the desire to escape, to become the better self, of what you want people to perceive you as rather than the truth. But maybe that’s the beauty of it.”
He thinks cinematically, explaining that his AW25 couture show, Becoming, aimed to “translate the ritual of dressing into a storyline”. He gave each look a narrative. So, what’s the story of the opening outfit with its bloody hand prints picked out in red crystals? “She went out last night and came back to her hotel. She woke up, super hungover, and has got all these mysterious stains on her duvet. She has no idea where they’re from. Is it ketchup? Blood? No one knows. But she still needs to get ready, because the big night is tonight, so she gets up gracefully. Hair still perfect, but she’s got all this on her duvet. I wanted to do untold stories about waking up, getting changed and trying on the new clothes you’re going to wear tonight.” As for those strange mannequin limbs, the idea came, he says, from his fascination with the language of posing and the gestures made in front of a mirror before you go out.
Wun, who was raised in Hong Kong and graduated from London College of Fashion in 2012, launched his ready-to-wear business in 2014, a decade before he made his spectacular pivot to couture. His triumph, on fashion’s most elite stage, topped a whirlwind few years which saw the designer gather unstoppable momentum. In 2022, he won the ANDAM prize. That came with mentorship from Chanel’s CEO Bruno Pavlovsky. When Wun confessed his dream of showing in Paris, Pavlovsky advised him to do a couture show and threw his support behind the designer. “He suggested couture, which had never been my intention – I assumed I’d join the ready-to-wear schedule. The next day I met the Fédération [de la Haute Couture et de la Mode], and they agreed.” Two months later he made his couture debut.
Wun had been creating made-to-order pieces alongside his ready-to-wear for years. He counts Beyoncé, Adele, Lady Gaga, Rosalía, Cardi B, Lizzo, Tems, Burna Boy, Usher and Björk as clients – and was more than ready to embrace the couture challenge. “It never really worked for us,” he says of the ready-to-wear game. “The market is very oversaturated. Even if a young brand gains attention at first, sustaining it is difficult. There are simply too many designers, too many brands, too many clothes, and people don’t buy as much as they used to. That’s the reality.”
Leaving behind the circus of ready-to-wear, with its paid-for celebrity front rows and marketing arms race, wasn’t just a relief, it made sense of Wun’s approach to fashion. “I believe in the integrity of designers,” he says. “That’s how a brand name would build, not just fame, but a legacy, a foundation. It’s about a designer who has a dream, who wants to do something different, master their craft and offer things not just to make money, but for the culture and the whole industry itself. Something that can last through time.” In the face of throw-away culture, Wun’s stance is noble, heroic, authentic and expresses perhaps the most refreshing thing about him: a lack of cynicism. He designs from the heart.
“Perhaps couture was always aligned with the way I design and practise,” he says. “It suited me. What I did was just focus on who I am as a designer. What do I want to do differently? I do every collection with pure emotion, because people can hate on anything, but they can’t hate devotion and honesty. They might not like it, but they can’t hate it because it’s truthful. It’s real, and I believe in that.”
Couture, he says, allows him to “be respected as a designer who likes making clothes and takes the idea of crafting and making clothes seriously, instead of just selling products”. If ready-to-wear was an exhausting round of show and sell, the challenge is different with couture, where one look can take months to perfect. “I prefer the way that I’m struggling with couture. The majority of the time, I struggle with how much time and how many resources I need to dedicate to this idea – how can I redesign it and push it further?”
He finds the intimacy of the designer/ customer relationship in couture to be nourishing. “When the couture client approaches a designer and they want to spend all that money on buying something, they listen to you, they appreciate you. In the ready-to-wear market, you have been filtered by so many middle layers. There’s the buyers, the stores and the online stores. You somehow have to keep on assuming who your target audience is, but you never have any direct dialogue with your clients.”
The couturier/client relationship always runs deep, but Wun counts creating a spectacular crystal raindrop gown for Adele and tour looks for Björk as personal highlights, because fashion is an important part of the storytelling for both artists. “It’s the narrative that they care about – every single detail. And it’s not just music, it’s the visual, the design, the lyrics. So to be able to work with an artist that has such high-level integrity and determination of knowing exactly what they want is always a good feeling,” says the designer.
But despite such an extraordinary roster of clients, Wun has been careful not to get eaten by celebrity freebie culture, which is rampant in fashion.
“We somehow get paid because we have always operated in this manner. You know, no money, no honey! But we established an idea where the majority of the stylists out there know that if you come to Robert, if you ask for something, we’re going to make sure that it’s the best. You will get all the things that you want and need, but you need to pay for it because we do it properly.”
As much as he is a dreamer, there’s also a deeply pragmatic side to Wun – a necessity given his status as an independent designer – which is fuelled by his own sense of fairness and integrity. “I came to London as an international student to chase my dream to be a designer, and after all these years of hard work, I cannot degrade myself. It’s not only what I owe to myself, but also to the idea of being a designer. I’ve learned to be very honest and direct with things or else you’re going to end up suffering with financial burdens, with things that don’t work out and with your team doing all this work for nothing. I’m just thinking about the long run, and I also really believe in ourselves.” He’s living the dream.
Taken from 10+ Issue 8 – FUTURE, JUBILEE, CELEBRATION – out now. Order your copy here.
ROBERT WUN: BECOMING
Photographer SEBASTIAN ABUGATTAS
Creative Director ROBERT WUN
Text CLAUDIA CROFT
Model ESTE LOONG
Photographer’s assistant MARS WASHINGTON
Special thanks to ATILOLA OLAJIDE, SUSANNA PUGLIESE and SORIAH ABRAHAM
Clothing and accessories throughout ROBERT WUN
