admin Yuhan Wang’s vision of femininity may appear delicate on the surface, but it’s always undercut with something steelier and a little dangerous. So it makes sense that, for her spring 2024 collection, the designer would turn to one of the most resilient heroines in literature: the protagonist of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. “I wanted to recast Tess in the shape of today’s woman,” said Wang after the show. “To explore a woman’s power and her ability to choose the path of her own life.”
This season, the wanderlust of the Yuhan Wang woman saw her head to the high seas, realized through a series of nautical-inspired looks that included barely there silk slips featuring paintings of sailing vessels; a gown made of woven strands of lace threaded with seashells; and a wonky cropped take on a sailor’s jacket festooned with delicate white ribbons. “She’s a long way from home,” Wang noted. The most compelling pieces for the designer’s loyal customer base, however, will inevitably be the cottagecore-adjacent gowns cut from lace and broderie anglaise, as well as the charming raffia hats that had been Frankensteined into bouncy minidresses—all of which were styled with her own distinctive riff on a Regency straw bonnet.
Elsewhere, a series of looks toward the end came with colorful strawberry prints, while a standout consisted of a beaded two-piece lavished with strawberry leaves—here nodding to the famous seduction scene from Hardy’s novel and adding a necessary injection of the perverse. “I wanted to keep that softness, but add a touch of strength too,” Wang said. If you ever needed convincing that softness can be its own kind of strength after all, Wang’s clothes should be your answer.
