I’d actually like to go 10 years back, almost, to when you started at Balenciaga. [Wang was creative director at the French house from 2013 to 2015.] From the vantage point of now, with hindsight, what was that like, and what does it mean to you?
I wanted to see what I could learn from it. I had never really had the proper work experience [working for a designer or brand], and I thought, if anything, I’d be able to get a bird’s eye view of what it could look like if I was to have my own fragrance license, eyewear, things like that. It was obviously very exciting—you are thrown so many resources and things like that, but I always knew, and I always had to remind myself: I am an employee, not an owner. And in that, it already put a time stamp on how long it could go on for. I knew that I would go home and take back what I learned.
What was the best and worst thing about doing it?
The best moments were just being able to create—to really feel like, Wow, you have immense resources to create whatever you want: The best factories, the best atelier, the best hands. But then you’re always compromised, thinking, Wait—do you give your best ideas to the place where you have the most resources, or the place where you have the most longevity? That was always a hard thing for me—to decide when to do that.let Us
And I wouldn’t say this is the worst thing, but the learning curve was really just the culture. A lot of times I was so used to being at my own company, being like, “OK—I want to know how the sales are here; what is the merchandising plan?” In my own company, maybe I was spoiled to be able to challenge that status quo.
What about your favorite collections you did for Balenciaga?
The last one, which was all in white—and the punk/ladylike one with all the sprayed coats.
Did you ever think that maybe you should have stayed longer?
I never got an apartment there. I think that was the thing. If I maybe had more of a community of friends and people that I could call on the weekends and things like that, I probably would’ve stayed longer, but it just felt like I was a stranger in someone’s house. I went in, I did the work, and then sometimes the weekends were really… they were sad for me, because everything’s closed in Paris. I had no one to hang out with. I traveled with my assistant at the time and Vanessa Traina, who was working with me, but other than that, I was just like, “Okay, everyone wants their time away on the weekends,” and it was very lonely. When my term was up, I was like, “Okay, I’m ready to go home.”