“Everything I want to say you will feel when you see the clothes.”
Donghui Wei knows how to deliver a good soundbite. But even punchier than his memorable quips are his opulent, unabashedly seductive clothes. While the world has been going around in circles between dressiness and comfort, elegance and coziness, Wei has been confidently crafting a design vernacular grounded in a contemporary sense of flamboyance: animal prints, intricate beadings, exotic fabrics, golden accents, and a flouncy feather trim or two. This evening he let these run free atop a skyscraper overlooking The Bund—a pretty fabulous setting.
As exuberant and layered as his collections are, Wei insists he avoids any sort of narrative. “I don’t know!” is his go-to answer to the usual query, “what did you have in mind this season?” Instead, he’ll speak of new material developments and his fabric imports—this season consisting of diminutive but effective beadings and Indian silks, respectively—or break down a key silhouette. Such was the case here with a ballooning skirt featuring an askew drape, a Jacques Wei signature, paired with a boxy yet softly cut jacket.
Wei did say that he’s been thinking about mature women, the ladies he sees in Milan, Paris, and Shanghai who dress well and confidently, and whose definition of elegance is lived-in rather than aspirational. Femininity was front and center at the collections this season. Wei’s exploration of the sensibility felt fresh in that he approached it at face value. If there was a misstep it was the silver nipple pasties worn under a sheer feathery frock, but they can’t all be winners.
Those that were, though, were true knockouts. They included buoyant draped jersey dresses that revealed coquettish embroidered panels at the back, sheer skirts with bouncy binding lettuce hems, and lace frocks and skirts worn over tiger print bodysuits or swishy silk under-layers. He also cut the sleeves of his tailored jackets sharp and rounded and with a slim shoulder—a welcome diversion in a season of ’80s power shoulders.
Wei is a contemporary art collector (don’t you love it when things make sense?) and he often invites an artist to collaborate with him for a segment of his collections. This time around it was the Irish artist Ted Pim, currently hosting his first exhibition in Shanghai, who provided artwork that Wei transformed into clinging dresses and swaying tops. “They’re very sensual, they have everything I like,” said Wei of Pim’s paintings. One could say the same of this collection, a considered pitch in support of the long-lost art of seduction. “It’s like a portrait of a Shanghainese woman, but she dares to be sexy,” offered an editor-turned-curator after the show. All in all, a beguiling proposition with the city’s romantic skyline mid-sunset as its backdrop.
