“I never have a muse,” declares Robert Wun. While many of his peers find inspiration in human subjects, the Hong Kong-born, London-based designer is more interested in the thorny forces that act upon them—like fear and grief. Wun credits this resistance to the corporeal with the critical success of his designs, which have been worn by the likes of Björk and Cate Blanchett. “When I choose a subject that is not human, the language can be so much more out of the box,” he adds.
For the past 10 years, Wun has been crafting a sartorial vocabulary all his own. Speaking on Zoom after his Fall/Winter 2024 collection “Time” made waves at Paris Haute Couture Week, he confesses to feeling caught between recent success and the looming deadline of his “Home” show in Hong Kong in early September. “I made this collection to question ... what we are expecting from creatives nowadays,” asserts Wun. “The industry forces people to feel they can never stop. It’s like, ‘You either deliver or you’re out.’”
This moment of reflection comes after a quick succession of hard-won accolades: Wun founded his namesake label in 2014, cutting his teeth with ready-to-wear before pivoting to couture in 2022. He made his runway debut in Paris in January 2023, becoming the first designer from Hong Kong to join the haute couture calendar.
If “Time” was a celebration of his achievements, it was also an acknowledgement of the pressures and precarity of his craft. The show opened with an homage to falling snow, taking ephemeral beauty —and its inevitable demise—as the main focus. “Endings can be rather graceful and powerful,” he muses. “What if we embraced that more, and were inspired by them?”
For Wun, couture remains a way to resist this churn—a time-honored art form that cannot be expedited, and where he is free to take his themes to their fullest extent. A Robert Wun show treats the runway like a film set, and the backdrop for “Time” was no different. Animated projections offered a fantastical backdrop for the designer’s magnetic looks, inspired by the seasons and fleeting natural wonders (Wun cites Alexander McQueen’s runways as inspiration).
As the last looks swept the Fall/Winter 2024 runway, Wun sent out four creations that demarcated the human body: flesh, muscle, bone, and soul. The final gown—soul—was topped with a glittering shroud that evoked a constellation of stars. In Robert Wun’s reality, endings aren’t always such a bad thing.
