Welcome To Susan Fang’s Imaginative Fashion Universe, Where Anything Goes

A color palette reminiscent of candy store aisles, beaded bubble bags, and rainbow-striped tutus that beg to be twirled — fashion designer Susan Fang’s creations feel like what a child with an unbounded imagination, who’s not yet tethered to reality, would dream up. “I’m really thankful for a teacher who once said to me, ‘If you can imagine it, if you can draw it, then you can make it,’” Fang, who had stints training at both Celine and Stella McCartney, describes over Zoom. “And we always believe that if we hope to create something surreal — and sometimes it just takes a little bit of love or beauty to make you trust [in that vision] — then we can make it.”

After graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2017 and launching her eponymous label the same year, Fang started a quest for novelty. "I wanted my work to feel fresh, like a new definition for fabrics and accessories," she explains. The designer, whose ability to bridge the unearthly with the natural world earned her a spot on the 2019 LVMH Prize's shortlist, adds that she's always been an idealist. "I remember as a child I would imagine I could fly in all my dreams. I also loved jumping and running around in big dresses because I could feel a similar movement [to flying,]" Fang says with a laugh. And in a sense, in her pursuit of originality, the ingenious artist made her fantasy of flight come true.

Fang and her atelier craftsmen — including her mother, childhood art teacher, friends, and aunts — developed a technique called 'air-weaving,' which involves stacking left-over scraps of fabric so they sit lightly atop each other, floating in-between a two and three-dimensional realm. "We purposefully stitch the fabric together with a gap in between the layers, so it can bounce and feel like it has its own life," Fang explains of the pieces' flying-like movement. She adds that the 'air-woven' pieces can shrink and stretch to any size, which means they can adapt to any consumer's shape and silhouette.

Despite the meticulous technicalities involved with her ‘air-weaving,’ Fang describes herself as “very much not a math person.” She’s not one to get hung up on the minutiae or logic of things. She’s more interested in the abstract why of something, a curiosity she says London’s prestigious art school absolutely encouraged. “At Central Saint Martins, they don't restrict you — they give you total freedom to express your vision. And while I was there, I remember thinking, ‘We’re all trying to do new stuff, and we’re trying to create fun things for fashion, but why? Is there a universal standard for beauty we are [subscribing to]?’”

Fang found her answers by studying nature, starting with the complex, geometric, and infinite patterns known as fractals. “They are the formula for the entire universe, [explaining] how the trees grow, how a mountain is, etc,” she explains with an undeniable, palpable excitement. And, like the young kid who often fell asleep dreaming of soaring in the sky, she once again became fascinated with air.

To paint a picture, Fang recounts a seminal memory of a sunny day in the Caribbean during her university years: “My inspiration with air started when I was looking at a beautiful tree in Grenada. I was under the reflections of the sun, the wind, shadows, and feeling the rhythm of it all.” (I allow myself to pretend I was there, too, her description of the warm ocean breeze so vivid the memory almost feels like one of my own.) The designer also cites Alexander Calder’s mobile sculpture Ghost, which she saw when visiting Pennsylvania Art Museum. “Our tour guide said, ‘Look — it’s moving so naturally and subtly because of the very few people on the ground floor, how we are walking, and moving is affecting that,” Fang says, “I realized air is exactly like fractals in how every one of us is connected, though we don’t really see it — it’s invisible.”

Fang took this message to heart, making sure every one of her label’s collections have a core theme of air and interconnectivity. In addition to her signature ‘air-weave’ technique, she explores the element through her penchant for voluminous fashion and bags hand-crafted from crystal-glass ‘bubble’ beads. The bulbous handbags were — surprise, surprise — also inspired by a moment immersed in nature: “I have a beautiful memory of diving into the water, and seeing these air bubbles in the sunlight — I wanted to capture them, to make them into something that can be forever,” Fang says. “And even though every concept and technique is different, the theme of air is a reminder to myself and others that we're not alone in whatever we do. We are connected with each other and with nature, and that can be quite healing.”

The message of connectivity is important for Fang, who grew up bouncing from continent to continent. Born in Ningbo, China, she moved to Shanghai at three years old, then to Canada at six, and back again to China at age ten. After that, she relocated to England to attend an all-girls school for a year, later spent two years in Tacoma, Washington, and then finished her high school education back in Shanghai. While profoundly eye-opening, Fang says her itinerant upbringing was difficult at times, as she often felt torn between cultures. “When you’re growing up, you’re trying to understand yourself, but if you’re unfamiliar with where you are, there’s a mix of misunderstanding and understanding that can be quite challenging. But through these experiences, I received a new sense of understanding from a broader perspective and had more acceptance for other people and myself.”

She explains that the open-minded mindset she developed in her formative years has become fundamental to how she approaches design. “We wanted the creative process of Susan Fang to be explorative, something like a discovery because when I was growing up, I couldn’t really control where I would go in the next few years,” explains Fang. “It felt like it was just very much up to fate. And that’s the way we make clothing.”

“For example, with our second season, we were thinking about the idea of print, which, in Chinese, it’s called yìnhuā — yìn means print, huā means flower,” she says. “We decided to lean into it literally by spray painting flowers and then moving them around,” letting the paint drip and bleed freely, so no two blooms were alike. This ‘que sera, sera’ methodology helped her crack the code on what would become another brand signature — her embroidered feather dresses. “I really loved the ethereal image of ink dipped into a cup of water, how the color just disappears. And to achieve that look in a textile, we realized if we layer organza and embroider layers of feather between them, it looks like a 3-D watercolor painting,” Fang details.

I remark that all of her work, especially her painterly gowns stuffed with feathers, feels overtly and whimsically feminine, the kind of clothing a young girl would fantasize about wearing. Fang says that’s likely herself as a kid coming through in her work. “I remember when I was six, and girls would ask me what my favorite color was, I always answered: ‘Pink!’ They’d respond: 'No, pink is too feminine, it's not cool. Our favorite color is blue.' But even now, whenever I try to use a ‘cool’ color, like, maybe black or red, I always want to layer transparent fabrics on top — but then it becomes pink! It’s unavoidable,” she says, a laugh bubbling out.

She believes her innate love for traditionally ‘girly’ sartorial codes comes from her mom, grandma, and great-grandma, the three female role models Fang had growing up who embraced their femininity. “My great-grandma had bound feet, so she dealt with restrictions [as a woman], but they were never challenges that made her unable to achieve something. And maybe they couldn’t be businessmen in their historical time, but they gave back to the community. They were Chinese medicine doctors and farmers; they fed the needy — they took care of everyone in the town.”

To Fang, her mom, grandma, and great-grandma symbolize that you can be both feminine and strong. “It’s not contradictive anymore,” she says. Some of the designer’s own work — the quilted outerwear that resembles soft, plushy armor or the capacious silhouettes that demand its wearer take up space — feel particularly emblematic of this female duality she mentions. “In one part, I think it’s comfortable to express who you really prefer to be,” she offers, saying to present all multi-faceted versions of oneself is a means of achieving peace. And lastly, as Fang puts it simply, “maybe to be dreamy or to be surreal is just to be happy.”

To keep tabs on what’s next for Susan Fang, stay tuned for September’s Spring/Summer 2023 season, where the designer will unveil her first solo show as part of London Fashion Week.

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