Ji Wenbo favors black color and elegance in his work. Photos provided to China Daily

Chinese fashion designer Ji Wenbo has found a place among the industry's top menswear makers in Milan and believes Chinese brands will soon have their day

Creating menswear is much more complicated than making clothes for women, says fashion designer Ji Wenbo, who combines Asian aesthetic rigor with European luxury to produce minimalist precious garments.

"It seems simple, but on closer inspection intricate work has actually been applied," says Ji, the first Chinese fashion designer to be included in the official calendar of Milano Uomo, the men's section of Milan Fashion Week.

Last month at the menswear shows in Milan he presented his Spring/Summer 2014 collection. "Menswear, being made of little details, balances, and imperceptible changes in taste, fires my creativity," he says. "To make women's clothes you just have to give reign to fantasy and anything may be fine, provided it is gentle, refined and not vulgar. On the contrary, with menswear you embrace all the limitations, but they are what actually drives creativity to a maximum level."

Born in Changchun 56 years ago, Ji is one of China's most lauded designers and in 2004 was honored with the Golden Award at China International Fashion Week.

He looked contented after his recent fashion show at the beautiful Palazzo Serbelloni, where he was in the company of his Italian friend Francesco Fiordelli, a designer and fashion consultant in Shanghai.

"I love Milan with blind devotion," says Ji. "To showcase my work to an audience like that and to gain exposure to a wider audience is an amazing deal for the future of my label, as well as the Chinese industry itself."

Ji has created a wardrobe that mixes luxury and simplicity, and celebrates artistic experimentation. His garments cross cultures, integrate East and West, and mix national cultures and art.

Before embarking on a career in fashion, he studied painting. "Art constantly inspires me. As a designer I cannot live without art, especially painting," he says. "Art whispers to you and you create."

His flowing trousers and spiffy jackets make models look like austere Zen monks. This season he was partly inspired by the easy simplicity of Zen monks' vestments, mixed with modern tailoring and a strong sense of cut and drape. Spirituality has always been the driving force of his sense of style. "For this season, behind the design concept of my new silhouette, there was a philosophical idea which refers to a Chinese expression, she de, the hand that gives gathers. This beautiful philosophical saying originates from the Chan of China: She - lend; and De - gain. You have to lose first if you want to win thereafter. It is more than a philosophical concept, it is a way of life, and is widespread behavior in Chinese culture. And I feel umbilically connected to my culture," he says.

He describes his creative process in almost mystical terms. "It is a vision, the spirit I perceive inside of me, that is behind the way I face life and consequently I express through my creations. You can call it Chan or you can call it Zen; nothing really changes. Faith is not a kind of knowledge, but a behavior that counts only when practiced."

He favors black and elegance in his collections. "Black means neatness and tidiness to me," says the fashion designer, who is usually clad in black himself.

He also works with contrasts - crisp white shirts featuring exclusive prints blended with a modern aesthetic.

"They were inspired by my personal reconnecting with the Chinese painters of my youth. Those black brushes on white evoked the daily scenes of those ageless times and landscapes."

In the studio Ji's team takes an innovative approach to tailoring and traditional silhouettes, injecting modern finishing and techniques. "I simplify by cutting out the superfluous, by giving up and gaining the complex; redundant components are then abandoned, the simplified lines and outlines are shown through 3D cutting, mixed with the quintessence of Chinese art.

"It allows fashion to gain a new life: the new oriental aesthetics is explained with an understanding heart. In life, as well as in clothing, there is need of simplicity."

The collection features natural fibers, especially silk, and soft cottons, but also innovative techno fabrics, all with detailed embroidery.

"Some of the fabric I used includes my patent anti-wrinkle material, which is also breathable: it wicks away sweat," he says.

The Ji Wenbo fashion-house headquarters is in Xiamen, on the southeast coast of China. With 1,000 employees, his production factory is in Shandong province. The Ji Wenbo Fashion Agency has a 600 square meter design laboratory and a 1,300 sq m research laboratory. The Chinese brand also has 100 boutiques spread across Asia, with the bulk in the Chinnese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and plans to expand to Europe soon.

Chinese brands are working hard to gain exposure internationally, but are held back by a lack of commercial appeal to international buyers, Ji says, although he says that will soon change.

"There's more tailoring, more creativity and innovation," he says. "We have done a lot of things but we need to do more: invest in brand building, education and communication, and then expand incrementally."

Local brands also need to grow and develop their identities domestically, reaching Western qualitative standards, he believes.

"We already have our own excellences, local designers who are a signature of excellence, but it is necessary for us to increase the number of those with a distinctive style in order to accelerate the process.

"We would also need more space in order to continue improving. Even though we have excellent production factories, we need to enhance manufacturing know-how that professional consultants like my friend Fiordelli can give. Pretty soon, thanks to excellent consultants, we will be ready with top brands. I am optimistic about the future."

But he insists: "We are still learning and we are learning by doing. We have to carry on studying humbly if we are going to become relevant and hit the right trends."

Ji believes the frenetic buying by China's wealthy of luxury foreign brands will soon ease off.

"In reality this phase is already underway. In this sense, the government is preparing to introduce a proper new tax on this kind of luxury goods in order to curb obsessive consumerism. In addition, the government offers Chinese companies incentives to invest in domestic brands so as to focus for the moment on the domestic market, but with a keen eye to the future in order to reach target audiences within international markets.

"I believe this is an extraordinary moment and excellent opportunity that we have to forge our 'Made in China'. Fashion is a growing market that continues to generate double-digit revenue growth in our country, unlike in the rest of the world. We have to make our best choices to maximize our potential in order to take the sector to the next level.

"We will soon be hearing of excellent Chinese brands. We will offer 21st century design with individual character."

He is happy that the fashion world is coming out of what he thinks has been a period of "too much excess".

Ji's aim is to continue expanding his customer base through European shows and follow in the footsteps of those who have inspired him.

"Giorgio Armani for certain aspects, and Yohji Yamamoto for others, shaped me as a designer," he says. "Those two fashion icons were my main inspirers when I still didn't have my personal style."

China Daily

Ji says making menswear means embracing all the limitations.

(China Daily European Weekly 08/16/2013 page28)