In her Fall–Winter 2026 menswear collection, Uma Wang looks to the Shanghai of the early 1930s—a city where two civilizations once brushed shoulders and quietly transformed each other. It was a decade when the silhouette of modernity first appeared against the lingering haze of tradition, when jazz met calligraphy, and the tailored suit began to converse with the qipao. Wang translates that charged, transitional moment into garments that feel both rooted and restless, deliberate yet searching.
The collection is not a recreation of history, but a meditation on its texture. Fabrics breathe like memory, and the cut of a jacket seems to hold the echo of past craftsmanship meeting a new urban tempo. Patterns shift between order and spontaneity: stripes colliding with loose tailoring, structured cottons bending toward fluid grace. Even the contrast between padded layers and pared-down simplicity feels symbolic—a dialogue between endurance and release.
What emerges is a portrait of fragile strength. The clothing tells of men poised between two worlds, negotiating identity through the act of dressing. There’s a certain poetry in Wang’s restraint: nothing shouts, everything hums with a quiet intelligence. The pieces seem aware of their own incompletion, as if intentionally left open to reinterpretation—a gesture of respect toward an unfinished history.
In this balance of memory and invention, Wang finds not nostalgia, but continuity. Her Shanghai is a dreamscape where the past flickers through contemporary form, where time folds into fabric, and where each look invites the wearer to inhabit that delicate space between yesterday and tomorrow.
Styling by Samuel Drira. Photography by Francesco Brigida. Hair and make-up by Mayu Morimoto. Hats by Horisaki. Glasses by Uma Wang x Rigards.
