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by Bart Boehlert

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"People are desperate for good design," states Chinese-born fashion designer Han Feng on the state of the apparel business today. "Customers are desperate for something new, for some new blood." she says. "Designers are now just copying old designs. There is nothing original, nothing new."

Certainly, a look at the fashion magazines bears her out. One year ago, the style publications proclaimed that women were to dress like 1970s disco vamps; this fall, the fashionable are supposed to look like either 60s mods or Jackie Kennedy in the White House years, complete with bouffant hairdo and sling back shoes. The 90s in fashion have been about regurgitating decades of the past.

Refreshingly, Han Feng does not look to the past, but at the present and to the future for inspiration. "I'm trying to make clothes that are easy, simple and put-together," she says. "I like to make women look more feminine in a subtle way." Her designs consist of beautiful silks composed in minimal lines, much like her sculptures of hanging sheets of diaphanous fabrics which she hung from the ceiling of the Takashimaya Gallery on Fifth Avenue for the "Material Dreams" art exhibit in the winter of 1994.



Han Feng started out as a scarf designer before graduating into clothing. Her 1995 fall collection was her first to include a full selection of dresses, coats, suits, evening gowns, and furs. The New York Times said the collection "reached a new level of sophistication." Women's Wear Daily reported that she had "broken new ground," and that "the tailored pieces were simply beautiful."

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