Hengdi Wang’s SS26 Debut ‘EXOGENESIS’ at London Fashion Week
London Fashion Week generally has its fair share of shows that typically end up as filler posts for Instagram feeds of brands attempting to be culturally woke, Hengdi Wang’s SS26 debut wasn’t one of them. It was strange, dark & a memorable way to end the week of show’s & too many free cocktails at afterparties.
The collection, EXOGENESIS, pulls from Eastern mythology, building it into a post-human future. “Clothing is not merely worn. It becomes a container of time, a vessel of collective memory.” I would often agree, lines like that are usually agency one-liners, but watching the show, I’d be inclined to believe it. These outfits were future relics, possibly weapons, & maybe even warnings?
On the runway, the models carried themselves like survivors of some unspoken catastrophe; Layered with rebuilt bones, scales & armour through 3D-printed metals & fabrics laser etched with what Wang called “Mechanical Oracle Script”.
The mythical ideology of the Shan Hai Jing didn’t show up literally. Instead warped into extraterrestrial silhouettes.
There’s something confrontational about clothes that don’t want you to feel comfortable in them. These pieces looked like they might cut you if you touched them wrong, & likely took an hour to get out of, but they also brought this strange softness in fragility and strength. I thought the duality gave the show a real weight. A lot of fashion week is about selling a fantasy of beauty. Wang seemed more interested in building a world where this wasn’t the most relevant of pursuits. Instead, a space where survival, memory, and mythology are what keeps the work moving forward.
At the end, instead of just the usual parade and applause, the audience left with a complimentary bag made from the same materials as the collection. Not typical glossy merch, but a piece of the world we’d just walked through.
Wang comes from jewellery design, which explains the obsession with detail and structure. He’s dressed the likes of Gaga and FKA Twigs, but this show wasn’t about celebrity, & not spectacle in the typical way. It was about showing what happens when fashion stops caring about status and starts imagining.
Wang’s debut mattered. It was both mythological & physical, showing the persistent idea through the show of clothes being able to hold stories older than us, and maybe last longer than us too. Walking out, bag in hand, it didn’t feel like free material. It seemed proof that this debut marked a refreshing approach, and a designer worth looking out for.
