Robert Wun had a breakout year, in terms of red-carpet placement, and followed that up by landing a coveted slot during Couture Week. (If my understanding is correct, the governing body is stingy with these because, in part, you have to check a lot of boxes to qualify as couture.) The theme, as he tells it, was “fear” — inspired by the idea that getting what you want, like a slot at Couture Week, can be scary as hell. I found this interview in Tatler Asia from before his collection was finished, where he talked about his various inspirations for some of these pieces:
There’s a black raincoat dotted with Swarovski crystals imitating raindrops; a sombre suit accompanied by a pointed cup inspired by the lyrics “a coffee cup that won’t stand still” from a song by Twins, a beloved Hong Kong pop duo from the 2000s; a veiled ivory ensembled singed at the edges and dotted as if by cigarette burns.
[…] “A lot of images in my head are quite cinematic,” he says.“For instance, the wine stain dress: I imagined a burgundy background with a drunk woman in a white dress making a scene with a glass of wine at a restaurant because her husband had just confessed to something horrible. The scene is chaotic but there’s beauty in it because of the emotion there.” One of his favourite looks is the “broken pearl” dress, taken directly from the scene in the latest Batman movie in which Bruce Wayne’s mother is shot and her pearl necklace shatters in slow motion. Wun and his team experimented with six or seven types of wire to recreate the effect.
Okay, but what of the hat made of knives?!? There’s a lot of gorgeous and dramatic workmanship in here, some of which don’t always translate to the red carpet (and some of which simply look hilarious), but a lot of which ought to be fairly tempting to people who are not opposed to looking like someone threw a wine glass at them. Honestly, I thought of Chrissy Teigen for that one.
