Photographed by Chuck Reyes for the September 2024 Issue of Vogue Philippines
This September, Robert Wun will show in his homeland for the first time with 10 new looks, and 11 pulled from the archive of the past decade.
Somewhere in Hong Kong, in the 1990s through the 2000s, there is a house moonlighting as a zoo. Robert Wun, then a child, grew up in a home that had a chameleon in one corner, tomato frog in another, and a red-eyed Australian tree frog and African ball python hopping and slithering about. Two parrots outside the balcony and a turtle on the balcony floor. At one point, he was surrounded by about 15 aquariums that he assembled for fun, one of his first creative outlets.
On weekends, he had a habit of taking an entire afternoon “where my mom would just hide in the shade reading her books, and I would just be getting my little insect container, spending a whole day catching insects.” He chased mantises, grasshoppers, dragonflies; lifted up logs to find blind snakes living under the soil. He was never afraid, and his parents had high hopes that he would one day become a biologist.
With a gleam of pride, the designer says that as far as he and his family are concerned, “I’m the only creative that ever exists in my entire family, and my dad always emphasizes, in at least the last two and a half centuries.” While his classmates scribbled formulas and equations in mathematics class, he kept his head down and drew animals, buildings, clothes, and other abstractions. “And my math teacher actually called my mom and dad and told them, ‘Well, he’s actually really good. You should look at his sketches.’”
Eventually, with his family’s support and encouragement, Robert flew to London where he earned a degree from the London College of Fashion. His chosen industry isn’t far from his first love: he still likes to get his hands dirty, only now he’s traded in hours of building miniature rainforests for days designing and draping in the studio. After debuting at the prestigious Paris haute couture calendar last January 2023 with a fear-inspired collection, and showcasing a second time a year later, Wun returned once more this June for his Fall 2024 couture show titled “Time.”
“The moment we lose touch of the reality of how the world is, is the moment fashion starts becoming completely irrelevant for me”
As it coincided with the brand’s 10-year anniversary, the designer began his process by reflecting, “What if there’s not another 10 years for me? And what does it mean to be able to do this now and to be grateful for it?” He attributes these ruminations to a Chinese philosophy that regards both success and failure as fleeting. “A lot of that kind of ancient wisdom came into my mind when it comes to time. The idea of it is less exciting, but more grounding and more, you know, sentimental, I would say.”
And what better way to show the passage of time than to reel it back to soil, to the changing of the seasons? Through painstakingly crafted gowns, coats, and millinery, Robert intimates winter’s delicate snow, autumn’s fallen leaves, spring’s blooming flowers, and summer’s sunkissed youth. The collection posits time as both a birther of beauty and instigator of its decay. The initial runway looks burst with earthly vigor, while the final four represent skin, muscle, bones, and soul, culminating in a tableau that reels the audience back from fantasy to the real.
In an industry with a tendency toward the aspirational and romantic, Robert reveals that he finds himself more anchored in realism. For him, creative inspiration stems from joy just as much as it comes from things that are sad, brutal, and real. He’s preoccupied with how fashion can exist and contribute to a world beyond its own: “Romanticism comes with responsibility. I don’t think anyone could survive in this world thinking that fashion is everything,” he asserts. “The moment we lose touch of the reality of how the world is, is the moment fashion starts becoming completely irrelevant for me.”
So he looks outward, eyes open as inspiration beams on him from a vast, vast sky. “There’s numerous references to anime, meme culture, Tarantino, Nat Geo, sci-fi, horror movies, video games,” says Chuck Reyes, a fellow diaspora Asian creative who has photographed the designer for Vogue twice now. “It’s like the furthest thing from the traditional references that you would associate with couture, yet behind all these references there’s craft and handwork and volume and drama and luxury. It brings haute couture to the here and now.”
And where Robert is now is on-ground, on the fastest sprint he and his team have ever been on in a decade of running. After their acclaimed fall couture show, the Robert Wun team is steadily working on a fresh collection. This September, Robert will show in his homeland for the first time with 10 new looks, and 11 pulled from the archive of the past decade, styled differently. It’s a melange of the past, present, and future, which is why there’s no season attached to the name. It’ll simply be called the “Homecoming” show. He describes it as a showcase of all the work they’ve done before, interspersed with new ideas about what it means to be from his hometown, especially as it pertains to the idea of feminism and other local cultural touchpoints.
Part of what keeps him steady at the center of the whirlwind is believing in the hope of creation. “It might sound very cliché, but I do feel like people that believe in creativity as their sole purpose to find meaning within it all… maybe that’s the beacon of hope, you know? To create a belief in something that is not necessarily what you need to survive, but what you need to keep living.”
By TICIA ALMAZAN. Photographs by CHUCK REYES. Producer: Anz Hizon.
