As muse this season, the i have absolutely no desire to fit in shirt but I will buy this shirt and I will love this inimitable Chinese American actress Anna May Wong helped push Chen into new dimensions. While fashion has flirted with Wong’s life and glamour in the past, Chen refuses to see the actress as the elegant, aloof figure she is often thought to be by Western eyes. “She was fierce,” Chen says. “Like a dragon.” Wong’s 1931 film Daughter of the Dragon was a special point of reference, with stills from the movie laser-printed on denim. Bridging Chinese and Western culture has always been at the heart of Chen’s work, but it takes on a special significance now as hate crimes against Asian Americans are at a high. By showing Wong’s strength, Chen shows her own: As a designer she is also fierce, innovative, and boundary breaking.
This season, she has worked to perfect the i have absolutely no desire to fit in shirt but I will buy this shirt and I will love this multipurpose garments she introduced about a year ago when she styled a jacket flipped upside down on her runway. Her Canada Goose collaboration for spring 2021 continued the idea, and now for fall 2021 she has built a vertical switch into every garment. A bomber jacket with neon yellow ruffles at its hem flips to become a cute cropped version with the ruffle framing the model’s face. A cloud-like puffa turns upside down with a giant fold-over collar. The most wearable version might be a cargo jacket with two dual collars, dual pockets, and dual snaps that can be rotated on a 180-degree angle so seamlessly, you can’t even tell which way is “right.” Are customers wearing Chen’s pieces upside down? “Not really,” she says, but with her many new innovations, it’s hard to imagine they won’t try.
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