"I don't want to do that with bridal," said Wang after her latest bridal presentation in New York on Wednesday, Oct. 21. "You lose the essence of who you are."
Her Fall 2010 bridal collection epitomized why Wang is known for taking bridal to a high fashion, artistic level, creating gowns that could as easily walk down an haute couture runway as they could down the wedding aisle.
"I try to keep the vocabulary interesting," she said. "It's not a formulaic design process. It's all organic, about feeling it."
Her jumping off point for inspiration this season was Cecil Beaton's costuming and art direction for "My Fair Lady," the 1964 screen adaptation of the musical starring Audrey Hepburn. Juxtapositions of black and white combined with Wang's stunning sculptural fabric manipulations made this bridal collection feel strikingly new with a sophistication unsurpassed in the current bridal market. She created something that is edgy and new, yet with a kind of romantic touch that even the most classic of brides can appreciate.
"My idea of femininity is an artsy femininity," explained Wang, "never saccharine or girly. Always sophisticated."
Striking horsehair bows in black gave flourish, like a line drawing penned in black ink, to strapless gowns that had swirling pleats or overlapping bands, woven more tightly at the top then spreading out toward the hem like a loosely deconstructed basket. Asymmetrical raw-edged flanges on a mermaid gown looked like the swirls of a soft-serve ice cream cone and moved beautifully, gently rustling like prairie grass on a windy day. Another stunning effect combined Alencon lace with tulle manipulated to look like feathered fans. The white-on-white precision lines created as a result looked like bright white paint dots on an Impressionist painter's canvas. Wang is never afraid to try a non-traditional color out in her collections, and her Fall collection featured an elegant black tulle ball gown with all-over petal appliques.
"I like to do a bride-wore-black dress every once in a while, a Truffaut bride," said Wang, referencing French New Wave filmmaker Francois Truffaut's 1968 film, "The Bride Wore Black."
Wang's dresses place a premium on the unexpected, always stretching her design vocabulary: Transparent layers hide and reveal the complexity of the design, with unexpected rosettes, smocking technique or hand-painted fabrics. With Wang, there is a form that emerges from formlessness, like a Rodin sculpture that carves out beauty from a slab of marble, creating something new yet celebrating the raw material in the piece - its humble origins.
(Source: Yahoo)
