“Fashion Matriarchy”: the two words might seem slightly disjointed when paired together, but make perfect sense as the title of PH5’s F/W 2018 collection, which showed at New York Fashion Week this February. Although a relatively female-driven market, the fashion industry hasn’t seen a spike in terms of female empowerment, or legitimate efforts to spotlight it, until recently. In the wake of anti-harrassment movements, popularity of models such as Ashley Graham and Adwoa Aboah, and designers’ more inclusive runways, the industry has entered a new era that celebrates artistry, variety, and shows clothes marketed towards the strong and focused women they’re meant for. Brands like PH5, a contemporary women’s knitwear brand by designers Wei Lin and Kering award-winner Mijia Zhang, are doing exactly that.

The matriarchal viewpoint of showing women in positions of power and change is highlighted by PH5’s newest collection, which is made up of form-fitting knitwear, color-blocked hues, and sharp silhouettes and shapes. The brand was originally formed in 2014 by Mijia Zhang and Wei Lin with worldwide female support in mind, but based in technology and science while still having distinct femininity. “It’s the chemistry value of 1-15,” Mijia Zhang says of the brand’s name. “Seven is the middle – we’d say that it’s adrogynous, but we are PH5 – so it’s adrogynous but slightly feminine. It’s not too boyish or looks like streetwear.”

The brand’s female support was clear within the Fall 2018 line and its’ models. Its’ diverse, all-female cast was invited to move and show the wearability of the pieces presented, and genuinely seemed to enjoy being part of the presentation. The brand is self-marketed as a “marriage of art and science,” which was literally shown in its’ Fall 2018 presentation at the Samsung 837 store in New York. The presentation collaborated with Girls Who Code, and half of its’ casted models weren’t actually models – they were real women, like a pediatric NICU nurse (Nowell Boardman), InStyle magazine’s Fashion and Beauty Editor-At-Large (Kahlana Barfield-Brown), the Hillary Clinton campaign’s Director of Engagement (De’Ara Balenger), and even two from GWC’s own program. The purpose of this was to show the strength of numerous women with their own careers that aren’t just pretty faces. “We wanted to tell this story with strong women and their careers; that they’re beautiful and intelligent,” Zhang says. “Sometimes, people just have this stereotype that if women are ‘too pretty,’ they must not be hardworking. But no; we have Nowell, she’s a nurse, we have Dina, she’s a sculptor with and owns her own pottery business, we have Kimberly, she’s a curator for the Met. So we have all of these strong, different women in our presentation.”

PH5’s collections are composed of knitwear, but instead of chunky cable knits, these pieces are formed in smooth and ribbed textiles using computer programming and engineers to achieve architectural effects. “Each season, we collaborate with scientists; it’s very technology-based,” says Mijia Zhang, who handles the majority of the design and creative work. “When people talk about knitwear, they think it’s very traditional, like something done by grandmas – and that’s not true at all. In our factory, we have computerized knitting machines, and programs operated by engineers. They code, and then the knitting machine knits following the coding; that’s how we make our clothes, and that’s the story we wanted to tell, about the people who don’t know how these are made in our factory.”

Adrogyny through a feminine lens is combined with technology-utilized garments in all of PH5’s collections, and the Fall 2018 one was no exception. The designs played with symmetry through wave detailing, lightly flared hemlines, and stripes in varying widths to form a core of ease and futuristic cool for the collection’s smoothly streamlined aesthetic. Additional details like color-blocking, near-transparent dresses, sweaters with one extra-long sleeve, and athletic zipper accents added an element of fun modernity that was pleasingly practical and quirky.

The fall collection’s clothing was inspired by Natalie du Pasquir and Barbara Radice of the Memphis Group, which heralded the Art Deco movement through combinations of colors and bold prints. “For this season, our inspiration was womenswear and the statements of the 80’s,” Zhang says. “I really like its’ questioning between functionality and decoration; some people will ask us how our designs are so colorful and can be decorated, but I think womenswear is functional. Womenswear is very bold; it’s questioning if there is a function.” This boldness was evident through the asymmetrical shapes and bold shades of mint, sky blue, navy, magenta, and red (to name a few) paired separately or together with complementing over-the-knee socks and gloves by stylist Rachael Wang – so, needless to say, this collection wasn’t formed with one neutral-wearing customer in mind (there wasn’t a single all-black look to be seen, which was refreshing and beautiful).

Written by Aaron Royce