Uma Wang was founded in 2005 in Shanghai by Chinese designer Uma Wang as a contemporary luxury womenswear brand specifically focused on what Wang described as 'a deliberately-Chinese, deliberately-artisanal contemporary-luxury vocabulary anchored to traditional Chinese textile craft and architectural-Mitteleuropean tailoring proportions.' The brand has been one of the defining post-2005 Chinese-anchored contemporary-luxury-womenswear brands, with the deliberately-cross-cultural Chinese-meets-European-classical visual culture anchoring the broader brand position.
The Uma Wang vocabulary settled around several recurring elements: deconstructed hand-woven Chinese-silk-and-linen tailored coats and dresses, the brand's iconic distressed-and-aged jersey separates with hand-finished raw-edge construction, deliberately-architectural Mitteleuropean tailoring with hand-dyed natural-fibre construction, hand-knitted Chinese-cashmere sweaters in undyed natural colour combinations, and a colour palette anchored to washed-cream, oxblood, washed-charcoal, ecru, soft-pink, plus the brand's recurring use of natural-indigo, walnut-tan, and traditional-Chinese-dye colour combinations. The brand has presented at Milan Fashion Week each season since 2009.
The brand is independent and held by Wang. Uma Wang operates flagship retail in Shanghai (the brand's home flagship), Milan (Brera, the long-running Uma Wang Milan store), Paris (Le Marais), plus international wholesale through SSENSE, MATCHES, Net-a-Porter, Mytheresa, Dover Street Market, Antonioli, Lane Crawford, the Boontheshop network in Seoul, and a curated set of contemporary-luxury-womenswear specialty retailers globally. The brand has been one of the most quietly disciplined post-2005 Chinese-anchored contemporary-luxury brands, with the deliberately-cross-cultural Chinese-and-European visual-positioning specifically anchoring the brand inside the broader 'cross-cultural-luxury-fashion' conversation that has been continuously rewritten since 2010.
