Founded in 2022 by Austin Wang, a former fashion editor at Vogue China, and Yangson Liu, a graduate from Tokyo’s prestigious Bunka Fashion College, Ao Yes places Eastern culture and aesthetics at its core. Wang and Liu describe their customers as “intellectuals with a sense of avant-garde.” Their spring 2024 collection features Chinese knotting details, hand-painted and jacquard florals, and silks and linens printed using Chusen, the traditional Japanese dyeing process. There’s a sense of ease to Wang and Liu’s silhouettes, most compellingly presented in their interpretation of the Chinese Tangzhuang, here in the shape of a jacket and pleated skirt connected as a loose sheath.
