Kiki Wang is an accomplished and award-winning fashion designer, who is widely known for her sharp, unexpected, yet, classy designs. She has dressed celebrities from around the world, and she has been featured in many fashion magazines for and interviewed by international media about her outstanding accomplishments in the fashion industry. 

'Be a Fashion Warrior' 

In 2020, Bvlgari, one of Italy's top luxury brands, released a new collection of products. One of its formal dresses was designed by Wang. The red-dominated dress, decorated with gold patterns, received rave reviews from the fashion industry. The photo of a model presenting the dress graced the cover of many magazines. It was the first time Bvlgari cooperated with a Chinese-American fashion designer.

Wang is also the first Chinese-American fashion designer to create costumes for Miss Marvel — the new face in the Marvel superhero series. During New York Comic Con, in 2019, Miss Marvel stunned people in a stylish red dress decorated with gold lightning. Wang reportedly said it took her just five minutes to sketch the dress.

In years past, Wang had designed red-carpet dresses for Hollywood celebrities who starred in Oscar-winning movies, such as Black Panther. Many Broadway performers, actresses, news anchors, supermodels and even members of European royal families are fans of both Wang and her creations.

"I am the creative director of the Kiki Wang brand. My goal is to make people in my dresses stand out. Classic, yet unexpected, mix and match, bold and different are my interpretations of fashion. From time to time, I like to take a risk and be a fashion warrior. I was told many times by my clients that they felt beautiful inside out after they put on my dresses … I like to use my designs to help people to rediscover themselves, and to feel more confident and powerful. I like to say clothes are the easiest way to bring up a person's confidence, and I am so lucky that I can fulfill that part," Wang says.

To ensure brand quality, Wang mainly uses silk and a few other natural fabrics. "I love natural fabrics. I think they are very healthy and represent a high standard. A good quality of fabric will make you feel important and confident. I also like to try new inventions, such as hightech fabrics. I love to mix and match and create something unexpected. We are so lucky that we live in a time that technology grows so fast. There are more environmentally friendly fabrics being created every day, that is what we like to explore … future creations," she says.

Her beautiful designs have graced the most glamorous red carpets in the world, including at the Oscars, the Golden Globes and the Cannes Film Festival. Wang has held dozens of fashion shows in China, Italy, France, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates. Each show has attracted high attention, and has received good reviews from local media.

Wang's hard work has been highly praised within the international fashion community. She has won many domestic and international awards, including the Outstanding Entrepreneur Award and the Best Costume Designer of The Year Award, in Hollywood.

Wang and her designs have been on the covers of or featured in many fashion magazines. A British magazine, CVH First Class, crowned her Queen of Couture, and Shine on Hollywood Magazine, in the US, called her the Top Asian Professional in America.

Wang recently created another line, Red Universe, to deliver high fashion to ordinary people. "I think our job as fashion designers is to create art works, and to use them to make ordinary people shine in their daily lives. I even created a red collection, Taiduhongpin, to fulfill that purpose. Red means good luck and good fortune in Chinese culture, and I wanted to use red design to bring happiness and good luck to people who wear our brand," she says.

Natural-Born Designer

Wang is a natural-born fashion designer. She loved drawing when she was 4, and she designed her first line of clothes, for her doll, when she was 6. When she was a primary school student, she became more obsessed with painting.

"I was really into drawing fashionable, ancient Chinese women, whom I saw in movies and books. I drew different kinds of ancient women, and I put different clothes and accessories on each of them. My drawings became so popular among my peers, and some of them started collecting my drawings. I think that was when I realized my passion for design," Wang recalls.

When she attended middle school, she developed a great interest in sketching. She drew sketches of her classmates during class breaks. It took her about three minutes to finish a sketch.

"I kept drawing, as I had a passion for it. Now, looking through the picture albums I kept, I am surprised to find that some of my later designs coincide with my childhood ideas," Wang says.

Even though she devoted a lot of time to her hobbies, Wang never fell behind in school. She was admitted to the prestigious Renmin University, in Beijing, where she obtained a bachelor's degree in finance.

At the university, she continued drawing and designing, and she started to alter clothes, which she bought, based on her concepts. After she graduated, she often bought fabric and asked tailors to make the dresses based on her own sketches. As such, Wang became a "trendsetter" in the eyes of her classmates and friends.

After working for a few years, Wang moved to the US, to pursue an MBA degree at University of California. She officially started her fashion career in 2015.

"As an MBA and finance graduate, I used to work as a territory manager for a Fortune 500 company. I always wanted to do something in fashion. But it is hard to even get a job in the fashion industry if you do not have a fashion background. So, without any formal training in the fashion industry, I started my own fashion company, and I started to design dresses for Hollywood movie stars. I am fortunate that I started my fashion career right on the Hollywood red carpet," Wang says.

The combination of her education and work experience provided her with a diverse and multidimensional way of thinking about fashion design. When designing, Wang not only considers the clothes, but also thinks about the essence of the brand, what the brand expresses, and what is the symbolic cultural significance of the brand.

"Design has soul. The design that truly touches people is not only about whether the clothes are beautiful, or not, but about clothes integrating with the wearer and making people instantly feel the beauty that hits straight at the heart," Wang says.

Promoting Chinese Cultural Elements

Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wang often returned to China to exchange and communicate with her counterparts through various activities, such as participating in film festivals, fashion weeks and giving lectures at fashion colleges.

"I have benefited from the influence of Chinese culture, so it is my responsibility to promote Chinese culture to the world. World fashion, itself, is a process of inheritance, innovation and integration. I hope I can make contributions to the integration of Chinese and Western fashions through my own efforts," Wang says.

With this in mind, Wang created the East Meets West series. She uses traditional Chinese-style buttons and patterns that include dragons, phoenixes, round flowers and Peking Opera facial masks in her clothing designs. She also adopts traditional nail-bead embroidering to mix and match with Western elements.

The formal dress series, Nüjun, has received great attention from the global fashion industry, and it has graced the cover of magazines in many countries, as well as the red carpets in Hollywood and Cannes. As a result, Wang has been called the "East and West Fashion Ambassador" by international media.

"This series is a kind of East-West cultural clash. All traditional fashion concepts are the essence of history, and need to be preserved and passed on. The quintessence of 5,000 years of Chinese fashion is very precious. As designers of Chinese origin, we have the responsibility to inherit and promote it. To make Chinese fashion elements widely accepted and loved on the world stage, we need to promote them in a different way," Wang says. She hopes she can make greater contributions to the promotion of cultural exchanges between East and West through her fashion designs.

Photos Supplied by Kiki Wang

(Women of China English Monthly November 2021 issue)