Yang wows with out-of-this-world collection

MILAN - Aliens landed at Milan's fashion week on Wednesday with Annakiki by Chinese designer Anna Yang, who debuted in the Italian city with an out-of-this-world collection.

Chinese designers are making serious headway in Milan, which is hosting newcomers, including Chen Xuzhi, who will show in Giorgio Armani's theater later in the week, and the baby-faced Angel Chen.

Yang, born into a tailor's family, was gripped by the fashion virus at age 8 and studied in South Korea and France before establishing her own label in 2012 and exhibiting at the London and Paris fashion weeks in 2014 and 2015.

Her latest creations, Yang says, are "an ode to aliens" and inspired by a documentary on the "discovery" of extraterrestrials in New Mexico in 1947, where pieces of aluminum foil were found.

"Maybe those aluminum pieces were aliens' clothes or part of their skin?" she says in the notes for the show.

So, she re-created the ETs: models sashayed down the runway wearing metallic-coated outfits with black patent leather boots, blood-red shiny skirts or grey metallic leggings.

The 1980s shoulder pads are back but wider and higher than ever and ending in sleeves so long they trail like tentacles.

Hands not lost in the long dangling tubes are kept snug in purple fur gloves.

Oversized coats - worn straight or shrugged off the shoulders - are in, following a trend seen widely at the fashion week in New York earlier this month.

Eco-fur, cashmere, wool and velvet play the counterpart to the heavily structured jackets, dungarees and rucksacks.

A beige hooded jacket with one arm in pink fur is worn with one green glove, while a pink plastic raincoat with a ruffled hem competes with a silver space bra trimmed with pink fur.

A futuristic Red Riding Hood sauntered nonchalantly around the catwalk, despite her coat featuring several extra arms.

Yang says she had been trying to find herself with this collection, after the year 2016 that was "chaotic and puzzling" for the fashion industry, with customers increasingly confused and wondering: "Styles? See now, buy later? Lower Prices?"

"It's time to slow down," she says, revealing backstage that she plans to open the brand's first store outside China this year - likely in Milan.

Agence France - Presse

(China Daily 02/24/2017 page18)