Article By Ka Yee Chan
Photo credit Xue Liang
Son Jung Wan, the magician, had her inspiration fully transmitted into her collection. Son Jung Wan’s F/W ’14 collection, Re-composition at the Pavilion in Lincoln Center during Mercedes Benz Fashion Week.
Son Jung Wan’s F/W ’14 collection was inspired by Mark Rothko. Mark Rothko was one of the most famous postwar American artists, and was also known as an abstract expressionist. Rothko was always concerned about form, space and color. He often tried to express emotions and thoughts with colors. Wan wanted to design her collection with colors of emotion waves like Rothko painted his canvases.
Wan’s descriptions of her color story:
“Blue: cold like the Arctic Ocean. Gold: rich and full of history, admiration, and desire. Mid-tone Gray: giving a sense of luxury. Ivory: an expression of tradition and grace.”
Starting with cream colors with some highlights of gold and metallic, then light pink, then comes purple, blue, multi-colors, and then ending the show with more cool tones of browns and greys. The transitions of colors during the show reflected the mood changing paintings Rothko did. Rothko’s paintings were composed of many blocks/stripes of colors, and that’s what we saw in Wan’s collection.
The stripes of colors were perfectly matching from body to sleeves. The stripes of colors element was used in different materials such as wool, fur, and knit.
The natural textures of the materials made the stripes very active and fun. Mixed uses of materials of colors and unfinished edges reflected Rothko’s blurred color boundaries. There was also the use of a lot of metallic, but Wan didn’t loose the feminine essence she always had.
Words cannot fully translate the visualization of Wan’s collection; one has to see the collection with his or her own eyes in order to feel the transition of moods.
Leave a Reply