Feng Chen Wang FW25 Is Big-Stepping Into Chinese Folklore
Inspired by the mythic text ‘Shan Hai Jing,’ the Chinese-born, London-based designer dreamt up a mystical fashion world inhabited by fantastical outerwear, ceramic creatures, gargantuan UGGs and more.
“These are my creatures,” Chinese-born, London-based designer Feng Chen Wang said backstage at her Paris Fashion Week show on Thursday. In the moment, the namesake fashioner’s otherworldly Fall 2025 cast surrounded her, each wearing ceramic-clad caps, carrying fantastical animal sculptures, and clamoring through the premise in the most massive, eye-boggling reimaginations of UGG’s Tasman. It felt like an alternate reality, one that Wang likened to Shan Hai Jing, a classic Chinese text that painted illustrious images of majestic landscapes and their mystical inhabitants more than 2,500 years ago.
Translating the book’s ancient legends into fashion, Wang collaborated with artisans from China’s ceramic capital, Jingdezhen, to create her “Feng-esque creatures,” or bug-eyed, sharp-toothed and kooky-looking beasts that came in all shapes and sizes as the line’s best accessories. The designer also fashioned her mythic creations as striking prints, which were woven into textiles and printed on denim silhouettes.
On the monstrous theme, Wang’s UGG collab was especially grotesque, wrapping the signature slipper in a goopy shell with fangs and harsh edges. “These shoes are works of art,” Wang said, smiling while barely able to carry just one of her mammoth stompers. “We first crafted the design with ceramics and then made a mold that became the shoe afterward.” In brown, yellow and blue hues, the big-steppers often had the front-row’s eyes peeled to the floor throughout the show.
Wang’s outerwear, meanwhile, was ready-to-wear’s hero. Bbonded neoprene tech mimicked the look of traditional wool on the collars of leather coats and sleeveless puffers, while structural denim coats and shiny puffers were satisfyingly stiff. Knitwear, too, was key: several sweaters were sewn with billowing bows bouncing down their backs, while others employed tonal patterns across the torso. All of them upheld elements of Wang’s supernatural inspirations.
But despite the line’s folkloric moldboard, Wang’s hope for the collection was quite practical: “I would love to see people wearing these items out on the street or really anywhere that they feel the most comfortable.”
See Feng Chen Wang’s Fall/Winter 2025 collection in the gallery above, and stay tuned to Hypebeast for more Paris Fashion Week coverage.
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