September 20, 2023 |
Like Marie Antoinette if she’d stripped off the lavish layers and joined the Ingalls’ at their Little House on the Prairie, Yuhan Wang’s SS24 collection served a flurry of spliced straw hats, lacey livery, baby bows and sugary sweet embellishments – all with steely conviction.
The Chinese designer’s point of departure was a literary masterpiece of the 19th-century – Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles – wherein the protagonist, Tess Durbeyfield, begets a virtuous victim of a rigid Victorian moral code yet demonstrates unwavering courage, challenging the expectations set for women at the time, before meeting one of the most famous deaths in literary history. Drawing parallels from those pages and as the haunting visuals that ensue in Roman Polanski’s 1979 film adaptation, Wang’s 21st-century reimagination of Tess sees her as a figure of resilience and strength, offering a fresh perspective on the feminine experience and an optimistic spin on the tragic tale.
Calling the collection Fata Morgana, after a type of superior mirage associated with the open ocean, elegant peignoirs and sheer negligees sauntered out alongside frothy frocks and tiered layers of lace. Playing into the tender naivety of youth, there were cotton baby tees and racer-back tanks with adorable hand-drawn teddy bears percolating their fronts, similar to the ones Wang ripped from a vintage pattern cutting book last season. Elaborately embroidered animals, such as cats, rabbits and deer, recall the protagonist’s connection to nature and nautical separates or ribbon fishnet pieces signal her escape from her provincial life. Strawberries, reminiscent of the film adaptation’s famed seduction scene, were dotted on bulbous skirts and bustiers, printed or hand-beaded. Rejecting the rigid constraints of perfection, delicacy was undercut with danger and the courage to dare.
Photography courtesy of Yuhan Wang.
