“One of the buyers the other day asked me if I was still doing ‘all of this fancy shit,’” laughed Donghui Wei at his showroom as he walked through his collection. The new lineup included sumptuous silks, lush feathers, supple leathers, and a plethora of embellishments in the form of crystals, mirror paillettes, tiger’s eye beads, and sequins, tons of them. There were also tiny animal sculptures, which Wei hunted down and purchased at flea markets and antique shops, worn as belts or necklaces together with golden and silver creature jewelry and brooches. “I mean, it’s my thing, it’s what I do!” he added with another, louder chuckle.
Wei is an off-calendar must-see at Shanghai Fashion Week. His designs pack a double punch of opulence and artsy esotericism. They could easily come across as pretentious if the fun Wei seems to be having wasn’t as evident as his taste for the finer things in life. “There’s no story this season,” he said of the new outing. “I’m tired of making up stories; it feels like I’m doing homework season after season. I just wanted to make the things I like. I wanted glamour.”
There may have been no underlying narrative, but there was depth in the way Wei layered different colors of the bounciest of feathers for a tank top and a skirt so fabulous the only word to describe it is “major.” He bonded lace in sweet, pastel colors onto pleated knit skirts and tank tops bound with leather trims and draped printed and plain jerseys and silks into jaunty skirts that seemed to fold into themselves infinitely. A sheer sheath was covered in the aforementioned mirror paillettes and worn under a blazer covered in a melange of the tiger’s eye beads and crystal adornments. The appeal of Wei’s clothes comes from the fact that, despite their ornamentation, they’re not overly complicated or restrictive. “They’re two boys, but they understand women,” commented a buyer at the showroom of Wei and his partner and co-founder Austin Feng, who styles the collection.
This season in Shanghai there’s a clear appetite for dressiness. Even the coolest and youngest-leaning designers are now offering the kind of embellished tailoring and so-called “fancy” stuff that Wei has been doing since the beginning. His new collection’s pièce de résistance is a one-of-a-kind satin tank featuring metallic and 14-karat gold accents made in collaboration with a jeweler. It’s a teaser for a jewelry line to come, and the embodiment of Jacques Wei, the brand. “Hanging in the showroom spread out, it’s just clothes,” said Wei, “but you see it all together it’s just fucking fabulous, you know?” Can’t help but concur.