London Fashion Week: Hengdi Wang’s SS26 Collection ‘Exogenesis’

Hengdi Wang’s Exogenesis immediately launched us into a place that didn’t feel bound by time at all. It was mythology, futurism, biology, and digital imagination colliding and somehow, it worked beautifully.

The collection dives into Eastern mythology, especially the Shan Hai Jing bestiaries. But instead of retelling these stories literally, the designer re-situates them in a futuristic world. The result? Garments that look like they could belong to extraterrestrial beings, or to humans who have evolved far beyond our current comprehension.

The construction alone feels like world-building from; Advanced 3D printing, Mechanical and skeletal spirals, Geometry molded into form, Digital craftsmanship meeting soft biological shapes, The pieces don’t just sit on the body they seem to orbit around it.

And then there’s the colouring. Each garment has a bio-luminescent glow, almost like deep-sea creatures or cosmic organisms. When the light hits them, they shift in tone, behaving more like living beings than static clothing.

The jewelry deserves its own paragraph. Instead of sitting on top of the garments, the jewelry integrates with them, extending the body, bending light, and adding narrative layers. The suits are the spine of the collection, but the embroidered mythic motifs bring warmth, symbolism, and emotion into the futuristic framework.

Watching Exogenesis felt like reading science fiction, but through fabric not pages. It stretched the idea of haute couture into a new dimension. Not just craftsmanship, but memory, fantasy, and cosmic philosophy in motion.

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Catwalk Images by Marcus Hartelt

Written by Maria Jonah