Bonjour, Paris Fashion Week! Hong Kong’s coming in hot this season, with six designers represented by Fashion Farm Foundation (FFF)’s HKFG programme in attendance.
We’ve always known about the existence of the immense talent that exists in Hong Kong, all nestled and quietly working in art studios and pattern-cutting rooms and hallowed university halls. FFF’s HKFG project — formerly known as Fashion Guerilla — is in full agreement, as an initiative responsible for bolstering Hong Kong’s up-and-coming fashion talent and sending homegrown designers and artists to international fashion weeks for their chance to shine on a global platform. And for a chance to meet with buyers and media in cities beyond our own.
Now, it’s time to ditch the niceties and get a little raunchy, a little raucous as we proudly send six Hong Kong designers off to Paris Fashion Week this month. But before break out the Champagne, get to know the special six below.
Salut, Paris Fashion Week:
Style
Style
CELINE KWAN
CELINE KWAN graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2021, started dressing Lizzo in 2022 and, this season, will hold her first-ever showcase at Paris Fashion Week. Talk about an overachiever! Kwan’s graduate collection saw zingy, retina-shattering drums of colour, cuts and cuffs only the cast of Euphoria can pull off and many, many articles of clothing that would also serve as excellent spots to take a nap in. Or to float away in.
For her Autumn/Winter 2022 presentation at PFW, Kwan takes to space with referential pulls from Woody Allen’s Sleeper and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, while also drawing inspiration from somewhere a little closer to home (but no less alien): pandemic-, lockdown-living. And if Kwan’s crowning aesthetic continues to hold true, we’re expecting a collection of designs that transform, of designs that feel buoyant. Exuberant. Alive.
Follow CELINE KWAN here
SWEETLIMEJUICE
Stocked at retailers you already know and love, SWEETLIMEJUICE is not new to the game. Co-founders Simon Ma and Jovy Hon, both London College of Fashion graduates, launched SWEETLIMEJUICE in 2018 as an updated response to traditional handcrafts; now, with an innovative, sustainable, gender-fluid spin intrinsic to the SLJ brand.
This season, SWEETLIMEJUICE looks to the talismanic for inspiration. From the Japanese Kamon family crest to the Black Stone set in Mecca to chains and shapes informed by the asymmetric geometry of sculptors Noguchi and Wendell Castle, SLJ pulls from a global, cultural, meticulously-researched moodboard. Ever-present is the brand’s signature, award-winning “denim-swaddling” technique, which evolves this season through a “metal cover” pendant that envelops a gemstone with a coating of silver.
Follow SWEETLIMEJUICE here
CHRISTIAN STONE
We all have our hobbies; our favourite tunes, our favourite shows, our favourite memes. CHRISTIAN STONE just manages to massage his pop cultural obsessions into stunning works of fashion. From video game wares fit for the real world to this season’s Breaking Bad-inspired collection, Stone’s cyberpunk universe is as much a feast for the eyes as it is a feast for the mind, with silhouettes as wild and bizarre as the world — the physical, the digital and whatever else there is — they occupy.
This season’s Breaking Bad collection takes on “ugly” dad clothes and bright, function-first fabrications with Stone’s signature intricacy when it comes to pattern cutting. Look out for actually-functional components like backpack compartments engineered into the very structure of trench coats and trousers. So you have extra pockets. For, uh, meth, if we’re sticking to the script, and beyond.
Follow CHRISTINE STONE here
CODA
Fellow band kids, this one’s for you. A musical arrangement’s “Coda” implies an impending ending. Its appearance on lined sheet music does not pay heed to the length of the following section of notes; it can be as short or as long as the composer desires.
CODA — founded by Yankee Leung, who cut his teeth at Initial, and Kevin Wong, who co-founded the multi-brand retailer GRAPH LAYER — operates on this same duration of non-time. It’s menswear pieces that stride towards an established aesthetic, like classic shirting and utilitarian workwear, but take the moment before the finale to meander, rather, towards futuristic, contemporary cuts. Think jacket vents (timeless) that extend all the way through the back (decidedly not), modes of deconstruction that, simply, look strangely worn and almost-classics that care not for “timeless”, but care very much about being timely.
Follow CODA here
Rickyy Wong Studio
Although eponymously named for founder Rickyy Wong, Rickyy Wong Studio is also led by womenswear designer Scott James Marsh… which is actually a neat summation of how the brand operates: as a collaborative hub. Each Rickyy Wong Studio collection is a blueprint for connection, with seasonal collaborators like dye artists and textile designers adding their own expert handwriting onto RWS’s roster of womenswear designs.
Rickyy Wong Studio’s Autumn/Winter 2022 collection, entitled “HYPER_CRAFTS”, ruminates on our increasingly digitised existence, with silk satins cast in acid green, fluid, floaty tailoring cues and knitwear pieces designed to be optimistically party-ready. Now that’s a future we’d want to live in.
Follow Rickyy Wong Studio here
VANN
Vann Kwok is no one-trick pony. Although her self-named jewellery brand sells, well, jewellery, Kwok is also a freelance fashion stylist and costume designer for films, advertising and concerts, all of which then symbiotically inform VANN’s experimental, process-driven jewellery designs.
VANN’s Autumn/Winter 2022 collection, appropriately named “Saint”, nods towards the very essence of jewellery; of the talismanic, yes, but also of religion, of art and of iconography. Setting the scene (and this is where Kwok’s dramatic, costume work comes in) are idolatrous statues, cult stands, standing stones — all, now, as background for VANN’s jewellery, exhibited like artefacts on sacred grounds.
Follow VANN here
Header and featured images courtesy of CELINE KWAN
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