Ones to Watch: Wanbing Huang. Meet the Chinese newcomer who successfully presented a highly constructed eveningwear, demonstrating a maturity far beyond her actual experience.
Many people out there have dreams of becoming a famous and talented fashion designer, but not all are capable of fulfilling that dream. Some people sadly fail, while some luckily succeed as if they were destined to do so from the beginning. However, out of all the stars that exist in the constellation, there is always one that shines a little brighter than the rest. Meet Wanbing Huang, a London based womenswear fashion designer.
Soil Rebelle, Wanbing Huang Autumn/Winter 2018, Photography Leslie Zhang. Image courtesy of Wanbing Huang.
This ambitious, skilled, and hard-working fashion designer has created various works of art even prior to graduating from fashion school. Wanbing, who grew up in Guangzhou, China, first decided to study fashion creation technique at Bunka University in Tokyo, Japan, and earned her bachelor’s degree in her mid-20s. Feeling like she wanted to dive deeper into fashion, Wanbing moved to London to continue her fashion education at Central Saint Martins under the fashion womenswear major.
Despite of her very busy life, Wanbing managed to launch her self-named brand at Labelhood, Shanghai Fashion Week’s platform for emerging designers. While working on her brand, she has worked at Céline and Issey Miyake and was selected as one of the finalist at the school’s “Louis Vuitton Project”. Through her determination, Wanbing gained international exposure when she was selected by Stavros Karelis, founder of London concept store Machine-A, to participate in NikeLab’s Vision-AIRS exhibition in March 2017.
Soil Rebelle, Wanbing Huang Autumn/Winter 2018, Photography Leslie Zhang. Image courtesy of Wanbing Huang.
Wanbing sees fashion design as a form of storytelling, in which she uses special textiles to showcase her point of view and opinions on social issues and intimate feelings while at the same time emphasizing the beauty of a woman’s body. Impressively, she finances promotions and productions of each collection through family support, remuneration of collaborative projects, as well as making and selling contemporary art pieces.
For her 2018 Autumn/Winter, Soil Rebelle, Wanbing released an amazing visual piece of storytelling in collaboration with photographer Leslie Zhang and styling by Audrey Hu. The collection was aimed to honor Cuban artist Ana Mendieta, whose famous Earth-Body series of photo-performances engages the human body with the four basic elements of nature. This spiritual and physical connection, between human and earth, was the conceptual framework for the collection, which featured Huang’s theatrical and highly constructed eveningwear.
Soil Rebelle, Wanbing Huang Autumn/Winter 2018, Photography Leslie Zhang. Image courtesy of Wanbing Huang.
Looking into feminine themes, the pieces follow female silhouettes, showing off the body in an empowering way. The slash up, side slits details allow flexible movement and the crafted garments emphasized on body curves. The colors used in this collection were inspired by mud, sand, grassland and blood body prints which were taken from Ana Mendieta’s paintings that had dark, deep and rich tones which evoked an intimate feeling. Huang successfully presented a skillfully handled eccentric pleat collection, demonstrating a maturity far beyond her actual experience. (Text Jennifer Supit)