“I love doing shows, but I think at some point to have the magic again, you need to take a little time. I need time for myself,” Jason Wu said during an appointment in his Midtown showroom, explaining his decision to not hold a runway show this season. After 15-plus years of business, Wu has seen the industry shifts and peers leave the business. Self care, spending time with family and taking time to look back were at the forefront of his mind when designing fall.
“I think quality of life is important to me because it affects how I work and the quality of my work,” he said. The quality of fall was certainly remarkable, and continued his recent journey in celebrating craftsmanship and construction of glamorous fashion with more of an undone, edgy lens.
“In November, I had time to organize my archive and catalog everything. To look back is actually a luxury of time,” he said, pointing to a beautiful plissé dress hanging in the showroom. The Madame Grès-inspired number belonged to his archive, a design that debuted in fall 2008.
“The theme of this collection is my archive,” he said, but rather than creating redux designs, he wanted to interpret them through a “past, present, and future” lens. For fall, this meant photographing both sides of the flat-laid archival frock, digitizing it and weaving it into a jacquard fabric, as seen through a strong basque tailored coat, minidress and striking red gown. The technique also applied to a selection of fluid layers featuring prints of pleated fabric.
“In the last few seasons, it’s much more about deconstructing the garment. I’m much less concerned about being perfect. It’s about craftsmanship and construction,” he said of the collection’s exposed constructions, raw seams and darts utilized as decoration.
The idea expanded into an “inside-out” pale pink wool chiffon silk dress; a wool chiffon blazer with exposed batting over cozy alpaca trousers; glen plaid bonded wool styles with inverted U-shaped hemlines that looked as though they had been dipped in paint, and an airy floral dress that evoked peeling paint with its laser-cut, machine-stitched layers.
“There’s kind of an attic-y feeling about this collection, like everything was stored for a long time and then found again,” Wu said, pointing out a glamorous red gown with metal thread-woven, crinkly texture and his fabulous finale gown with exposed back crinoline skirt.
“It’s about the workmanship and the beauty of making clothes. How all the details are special and should be appreciated, especially with so many clothes on the market, what we make has to mean something.”
