Can laissez-faire economics stimulate anything-goes menswear? This Uma Wang menswear collection recalled a moment when it did. The designer said she was inspired by the period in the 1930s when Shanghai was a booming but colonially-imposed creative melee of free trade, the Jazz Age, and homegrown tradition: “a pivotal era when Western modernity first intersected with Chinese classical culture,” as Wang put it in her release.
The Groucho Marx style round-framed eyewear and the narrow-brimmed bowler hats, made in collaboration with Horisaki, were accessories placed to signpost Wang’s point of departure. Wang took period Western tailoring cues, including chalk stripe pattern and the architecture of double-breasted jackets, before exaggerating them in scale while simultaneously softening them through their construction in washed wool and cashmere mixes. Her jackets were cropped as high above the hip as her pants were cut low beneath the ankle, creating an unusual contrast between leg break and waistline. Alongside these occidental details were contrastingly Eastern signifiers including pankou fastenings on weathered wool workwear jackets and printed or crumple-finished round-necked silky viscose shirting with asymmetric hand-tie fastenings.
Between these two edges of her melting pot Wang placed plenty of less literal, more abstract pieces. These included amplified caban jackets and sailor pants, crumpled collarless robe coats, and double-breasted bombers in irregularly angled herringbone mohair pattern. There were many lovely work jackets in washed wools or floral decorative jacquards. Knitwear included cashmere and raccoon dog rib-knits with delicately contrasted tonal color details. Idiosyncratic details included unbonded double-faced collars on shirting and purposefully tattered contrasting color edging on sweater sleeves.
Designed in Shanghai and made in Italy, this collection’s transnational identity echoed the theme Wang imposed on it: that parallel seemed as purposeful as everything else on the rail in her Milan showroom.