There is a singular species of cactus that blooms for only an hour or two during a select few summer nights each year. The petals of the Epiphyllum oxypetalum, known variously as the “queen of the night” and Tan Hua, blossom abundantly but wilt before dawn. Its ephemeral beauty has long been the stuff of legend, most recently—and perhaps most famously—mythologized in the movie Crazy Rich Asians.
“What kind of beauty only blooms once a year?” asked Jacques Wei designer Donghui Wei at an appointment the day after his show in Shanghai. “I was inspired by this really intense but fleeting beauty, and thought about how I could capture that moment.”
Fashion is not unlike the bloom in question. This is an industry built on the idea of beauty’s transience, where a designer’s best and most perfect output is presented twice a year for 15 or so minutes, and has a shelf life of around six months. Wei crafted his own definition of evanescent beauty here, with a collection that was equal parts timeless (a fabulous camel coat, a great pair of wool suiting slacks) and decisively now (a sheer sheath or two).
To his credit, he wasn’t too literal with his iterations of the flower. There were fabric appliques and hand painted abstractions, and a couple of metallic sequins opening on a tailored jacket (“they’ll change as they age, get either darker or yellow”). But there were also feather boas elegantly bursting from the hems of skirts and blouses, and layers of ruffled silks converging at the center of skirts. Wei draped, gathered, and twisted his on-trend tops with spontaneity, and the raw hems on otherwise prim underskirts had a relaxed sense of abandon. “I don’t want anything to look too perfect,” he said.
Underneath the bells and whistles (and little flowers) were well made, easy to wear clothes. The single-button shirting and leather waistband skirts look like instant classics. The spell that Wei so confidently conjured on his runway was one that transformed the fugitive beauty of a fleeting bloom into a wardrobe one will want to live in way beyond a single season.
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