Jing Wong performing at Music by the Harbour, 2010
Something went wrong with the universe’s distribution of talent among human beings three decades ago. Jing Wong is one of the beneficiaries of this unfair partitioning of creativity and inspiration. He received a triple dose.
Design, theatre, drawing and fashion: Wong already has more strings to his bow than Robin Hood could dream of. But this winter, the 29 year-old Hong Kong fashion designer will add yet another – music, as his first album is about to be released.
From the six years he spent in London after attending high school in his native Hong Kong, Wong brought back two degrees and a classy British accent. After graduating with first honors in theatre design from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, he did his masters degree in theatre directing at Central School of Speech & Drama.
That was before he responded to his sister’s distress call, and headed back toHong Kong to become her inspiration and business partner in 2006.
Stepping into fashion
Struggling to manage her own fashion label, which she started in 2006, Kay Wong asked her brother to help start a new creative project. ”The chemistry between fashion and theatre is as good as the one between us. He’s my brother and my best friend, so working with him just felt natural,” she said.
She gave up her label and later that year they created Daydream Nation, a new brand of clothes and accessories that has now acquired local and international recognition.
However, Wong does not see himself as a fashion designer but as a theatre designer working into fashion. “Because of my background, I think of clothes in a spatial way, in terms of positive and negative spaces and interaction with the body,” he said.
“Unlike other designers, I don’t know much about fashion design or what women want to wear, or what will sell. That’s Kay’s area of expertise”.
Instead, Wong handles the creative, story-telling part of each collection. Thus, for every season, DN does not showcase its new collection on a fancy catwalk like most other brands do, but rather, puts on a theatrical performance where models sometimes enact characters.
For DN’s creations, Wong finds his inspiration in reading novels, meeting people and experimenting with diverse media of artistic expression. Jumping around things opens new doors for his creativity.
Just as theatre and fashion influence each other, music and fashion are closely related in Wong’s productions. “For example, in the 2011 Autumn Winter collection, I created a cape that’s like a raven’s wings. This idea comes from one of my songs, called Broken Bird,” he said.
The sound of music
When he is not busy designing clothes for DN or costumes for the theatre, Wong is drawn to music. In fact, a suitable description of his relation with music would be as if a whole band blended into a single body.
He is not only a song writer, but also a singer and a musician playing many instruments, including guitar, banjo, ukulele, trumpet and harmonica. He finds music, more than theatre or fashion, a powerful way to express himself.
Although he criticizes the money-obsessed character of Hong Kong society, and disapproves of the way the government treats cultural and historical sites, Wong’s songs are devoid of any political content.
“I’m not a protest-song singer,” he said. “My songs are quite personal; actually they’re like my diary. My youth in London, my sister, my experiences…those are quite casual themes.” Last Breath of Youthful Melancholia is the title of both DN’s new winter collection and of Wong’s first album, to be released in December.
His album, between folk and indie acoustic rock, is entirely in English, despite the reservations of People Mountain People See, the local record company that signed him.
With an exception for international stars and foreign bands, Cantonese remains the main language of Hong Kong’s musical scene. “In Asia, singing in English is like suicide,” Wong said. “But I can’t help it; it just comes naturally to me. I like the way words sound, their meaning and the way they flow in English better.”
High expectations
While Wong crosses ‘recording an album’ off his to-do list, three wishes are keeping him away from being truly satisfied with his life and completely happy: doing a solo concert in a big venue; setting up an entire DN building in Wanchai including a studio, a café and shop and classrooms; and creating a musical theatre.
Founding a creative hub inHong Kong, less westernized than the Fringe Club, where people could share ideas, combine their talent, learn from each other and ultimately create things together means a lot to Wong.
DN is already a cross-disciplinary platform where the boundary between theatre and fashion is blurred, and that occasionally offers artistic and musical workshops. But he would like to push back the limits of creativity even further.
His concept of ‘musical theatre’ for example is like no other: it would be neither a musical, nor a theatrical play with music in background, but a new form of artistic performance, combining pure creativity and spontaneity. Wong has already imagined what Breathless, the first show, could be if such theatre were to exist one day.
“Someone would run on stage for a while, then stop and … would… read… a.. list.. of… words… or… some…poetry,” he said, imitating someone out of breath. “It would create a rhythm that would be followed by someone playing harmonica, then maybe by a guitar player or (something) else, and eventually become a whole visual, musical and theatrical experience.”
With such a constant profusion of ideas and new interests in mind, Wong is almost never at rest. “I have these weird little habits, especially the fidgeting thing, all the time,” he said, his hands playing a silent concerto on his lap.
Whether it was due to badminton moves, ukulele routine or calligraphy gesture, his wrists flitted about everywhere, as if still in the game or the studio. Now that he is learning how to play flamenco on the guitar, he cannot keep his fingers still either.
“People might think that I’m weird, but I’m not,” he said.
“I think I’m quite normal,” he added, adjusting his black suspenders.
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