Shawna Wu’s designs loop and knot between past and present

“In my world, what I’m into is having something really old, but also very sexy” – that’s how New York designer Shawna Wu describes the idea behind turning traditional Taiwanese carvings and Chinese knotting techniques into lingerie. 

After growing up in Singapore, Wu moved to New York just over a decade ago. Since then, she’s worked at a number of brands throughout the city, including Helmet Lang, Dion Lee, Alexander Wang and The Row. Always keeping her day job in fashion, Wu spends her free time learning time-honoured textile techniques. In 2021, she found an “aunty on Facebook” in Taiwan to train her in Chinese knotting. “I go to her house because a lot of these crafts are not always the most accessible,” she says. “I want to go and take this traditional knowledge into broader cultural consciousness and fashion can reach a lot of people.” 

Wu held her debut SS26 presentation, Carvings, at New York Fashion Week in September, alongside a film made in collaboration with Erika Kamano, called Taiwan Baby. There, she showcased new techniques for making new forms based on old artifacts: bangles with the likeness of cong vessels and cuffs derived from jade bi discs that represent ancient cosmological beliefs in which Heaven was a circle wrapping around the axis of earth. 

Already, Wu’s traditional but radical take on knitwear and 3D-printed accessories have caught the attention of the likes of Ayra Starr, Charli xcx and Lily-Rose Depp. Her hand-knotted pieces use traditional rope and cord, along with custom stretch cords – using knitwear techniques to breathe new life into ancient forms of textile making. “I think it's interesting to put a very traditional thing in a provocative setting,” she says. 

Ahead, we spoke to Wu about tying, looping and knotting between past and present, a decolonial approach to “good taste” and the power of alternating between tradition and modernity.

Who would you say were your fashion icons growing up?

Shawna Wu: Bai Ling. She’s still around, and she’s so iconic and sexy. She had this one dress with a gold dragon on the back that’s so good. I just love how she wears super crazy outfits. 

What was your earliest fashion related memory? 

Shawna Wu: Do you remember Project Runway when Austin Scarlett made the dress with the corn husks? It was the first season ever. It was so pretty. I was really young, but I was like, ‘Oh my God’. I was very into making random things like that when I was a kid. 

Tell me about the decision to start your own brand. 

Shawna Wu: To be honest, I never really wanted to have a brand per se. At the end of 2020, because of COVID, I started to post more online. I was just thinking about making stuff. I think my beginning point is always that I want to make some specific thing. But I needed to house all of these hybrid textile things under one thing, which is why it’s my name. I wasn’t thinking very deeply about it; I hadn’t considered it as a brand until Ssense reached out saying, ‘Can you do a capsule?’ Then, I was like, ‘Okay, so I guess it’s a brand.'

Even if you weren’t thinking of it as a brand to begin with, did you have an ethos behind it? And how has that developed over time?

Shawna Wu: Yes: rich material culture. Just having depth to the materials. What I’m interested in is material culture and textile making techniques specific to cultural heritage. So, Chinese knotting is one of them, a type of textile making that is specific to my culture. Chinese knotting is not really in the mainstream cultural consciousness. Since knitwear starts from scratch, I start from the fiber and think more about textiles. 

How do you think being Taiwanese and growing up in Singapore shaped your outlook on fashion?

Shawna Wu:I think there are a lot of ideas around good taste in fashion under a very colonial type of hierarchy. It’s always Europe, traditionally, where people decide what’s good taste. Then, everyone has textiles made in Asia, but the craftsmen and the artisans will never get the kind of ranking of being high fashion. We’re so used to seeing our motifs and textiles on the runways with brands like Jean Paul Gaultier previously having these very ethnic collections. It has to be viewed through the European brand's lens for it to be taken seriously. For my stuff, I want to keep my roots true and try not to edit it based on a colonial approach to good taste. 

What four designers would make up your fashion Mount Rushmore?

Shawna Wu: Junya, because the pattern making is crazy. Rick Owens, because his way of using jerseys and knits is really good. Then McQueen and Alaïa, because as a knitwear person, duh!

Can you share a recent picture from your camera roll? 

Shawna Wu: In Taiwan, there are clear glass box shops outfitted with bright neon lights selling betel nut to truck drivers. Betel nut is a natural plant that gives you a high when you chew it. There’s a culture of ‘betel nut beauties’ who work the shops and sometimes the betel nut comes in boxes with pictures of sexy girls, which inspired the matchbox merch that I gave out at my presentation. 

How would you describe the aesthetic of the brand? 

Shawna Wu: Traditional and radical. All of the techniques are traditional, and Chinese knotting has a legacy that it comes from, and the way that I want to do professional knitwear techniques or textile making has a training behind it. But radical in the sense that it’s in a different context. So, using Chinese knotting for something more provocative.

Like your lingerie piece, for example. So what does your design process look like?

Shawna Wu: If I’m in Taiwan, I’ll be looking at carvings – they have those crazy wood carvings and super elaborately carved temple pillars – and know there’s thousands of years of artisans who were nameless. Then, I’ll ask myself what are some of the ways I can re-do it in garment form. For example, my Carved Disc Bra is based on old jade, which was hand carved back in the day. I used 3D molding to print it into a bra. 

That must take a long time. What’s the longest a piece has ever taken you to create?

Shawna Wu: My double butterfly handknot shoes, for example, probably took me two years to develop. I don’t have a timeline in the way a company does. I will develop it on and off for years until I’m like, ‘I can post this now.'

What do you listen to when making clothes? 

Shawna Wu: I am actually partially deaf, so recently it’s a lot of 285 hertz sound frequency for deep tissue healing. 

Congrats on your debut presentation! Why was it important for you to be a presentation, not a traditional runway show?

Shawna Wu: I wanted to do a presentation that wasn’t a runway, because I wanted to have more world building. There was a documentary style video I made in Taiwan with my friend Erika of Taiwanese flower trucks, a traditional thing associated with temples. During funerals, they drive the cars with all these crazy flashing lights and decor, and have pole dancers. It’s a sliver of Taiwanese culture that’s really unique, and people don’t really know about. 

Money is no object. Where would you stage your first catwalk show then?

Shawna Wu: It would be in the mountain in a cave with a giant custom electronic flower truck. It would drive all of my models around everywhere, like New York, and then drive us into the cave.