Shao Yang brought her collection Underworld Royale, Part 2: Softness in the Shadows to Shanghai after staging an earlier chapter as a performance at New York’s Chinese Tuxedo restaurant. This time, a round restaurant table was set at the center of a red-lit, carpeted runway. The 1990s Hong Kong gangster movies that fascinated Yang growing up between Taipei and Brooklyn supplied the mood; the designer’s own Taiwanese-American experience gave the story a more personal undertow.
The tough guys, however, were granted a little emotional latitude. Leather jackets shed some of their rigidity, denim grew softer, and sharp tailoring loosened its grip. Yang showed asymmetrical three-piece suits in Prince of Wales checks and pinstripes, cropped blazers worn over bras, wrapped shirts cinched into peplums, and pinstriped waistcoats with bare backs. Slit satin skirts and black leather added sex appeal, while coated denim jumpsuits and broad airbrushed denim suits kept the underworld’s edge. For a designer whose career began in made-to-measure tailoring, deconstruction comes with a very precise set of instructions.
Recently named one of the recipients of the CFDA | Genesis House AAPI Design + Innovation Grant, Yang is building a bridge between Asian cultural memory and New York street codes. In her underworld, gangsters seem to have a softer side, and rather good tailoring.