Just over a month ago, Megan Thee Stallion wore a look from Jingwei Yin’s Spring 2024 collection for the Oude Waag during the Clive Davis Pre-Grammy Gala. “I was very surprised and very inspired,” Yin said on the phone ahead of his fall show. “She gave more power to that outfit and gave me a new dimension to explore different types of bodies.”
Yin is a designer who is seduced by the human form. Its sinuous, vibrant drapes and deliberate cuts are meant to both conceal and elevate a woman’s form. “The Chinese market sees Oude Waag as a sexy brand,” says the designer, “but in the Western market it is more direct and very simple when you talk about sexiness. My work is about showing the body in a very subtle way.” OudeWaag is certainly sexy, but the sensuality is nuanced and complex. It depends less on the uncovering of the body and more on the tension with which Yin envelops it. This is a Chinese designer that American buyers should pay close attention to.
Yin said he was thinking about fireworks this season, about their paradoxical nature as a symbol of both unifying celebrations and dangerous weapons. “It’s a reaction to the world, or to myself,” Yin said. “We have Chinese New Year in January and it’s all about celebrations, but on the other hand the market is unpredictable, just like the whole world at the moment.” Yin’s determination, he said, was to “bring elegance and strength in difficult times.”
He delivered that much in spades. What Yin can do with jersey around the body is in a class of its own when it comes to defying gravity. Think of a piece of black fabric in the front as a bodysuit and skirt and draped in a seamless cape in the back, or the way he wrapped the body with an overstretched sleeve draped in a maxi wrap dress. But this season he went further, contrasting these wispy, slinky outbursts with explosive swirls of heavier metallic materials and rugged sheepskin accents. His tailor-made jackets remained razor-sharp at the shoulders, but with his jackets he entered new territory. The cocooning wrap silhouettes were reminiscent of both Cristóbal Balenciaga and Azzedine Alaïa in cut and spirit, but looked utterly contemporary in proportion and fabrication.
Yet Yin is most impressive when it is at its subtlest. A deceptively simple look appears to be a halter blouse styled over a skirt in the front, but turns out to be one piece of fabric folded over itself and held together by a single seam in the back: a magic trick and a technical tour de force. Here experience is most important. Shanghai Fashion Week is exciting for its young talents with extravagant ideas and magpie collections, but Yin brings focus and restraint. His colleagues must keep a close eye on him.
