In an era where so much of fashion’s fantasy is filtered through a screen, Claudia Wang dares to make the pixel palpably soft.
Wang’s latest presentation unfolds like a living fairytale – less a runway than a reverie. Models drift through an ethereal landscape of plush pillowy textures, each swathed in the collection’s custom prints, blurring the boundary between boudoir and dreamscape. It is immersive in the truest sense: a world you don’t simply observe, but sink into.
Deeply attuned to online culture and the hyper-visual language of the virtual realm, Wang translates screen-born design codes into something romantic, playful, and exquisitely tactile. Hand-drawn unicorns – delightfully mythical, almost subversive in their sweetness – gallop across silken surfaces, while AI-generated laces and bows introduce a tension between the handcrafted and the computational. It is a dialogue between innocence and algorithm, nostalgia and next-gen artifice.
Botanical and animal motifs bloom throughout, rendered in a fresh, luminous palette that feels both comforting and quietly assertive. Powdery pastels meet verdant greens and petal pinks, shaping a visual lexicon that balances ease with elegance. Nothing screams; everything whispers, but with conviction.
The silhouettes are relaxed, almost languid. Wang reimagines sleepwear and robes, garments traditionally tethered to intimacy, as contemporary statements of presence. There is a radical softness at play here. Draped wraps, fluid layers, and gently cocooning forms speak to a new kind of power: one rooted not in armor, but in vulnerability. For AW26, Wang does not merely present clothes; she offers an invitation into her interior world.
And what a world it is. Each show constructs a universe beyond the garments themselves, a coded realm for those who exist partly online and wholly within their imagination. In Wang’s hands, fashion becomes both diary and avatar, a tender yet self-assured exploration of how we perform, protect, and proclaim our identities.
This is femininity unbridled, yes – but also reprogrammed in a highly programmed world.
