FOR THE Glass Archival Fashion Collectors series, we spoke to some of the most influential collectors from across the world to hear more about how they started their collection, the purpose behind it, and their take on the ever-growing industry. Today, we focus on Zing who collects Chanel jackets.
Zing and a selection of his most prized Chanel jackets
“I have been mesmerised by Chanel since I was a kid in the ‘80s,” Zing tells me. The Hong Kong-based make-up artist with a lifelong passion for Chanel, and owning a collection of their jackets worthy of a museum exhibit, Zing, is an inspiring character. Studying the perfume adverts of Inès de la Fressange and Carole Bouquet, filmed by Ridley Scott and Richard Avedon, a young Zing familiarised himself with the design, silhouette and legacy of Chanel’s designs and became transfixed by their magic.
He soon was bored with anything else. “It suddenly dawned on me that I wanted a unified look for myself, almost like a military uniform, or a suit that people wear every day. It’s just that I chose a more interesting suit with more details”. That suit translated in the form of Chanel jackets.
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“All of the jackets originally take inspiration from men’s clothing anyway” Zing continues, “I had one, then two, then three and then four and then I started to back date and bought vintages as well … I started getting obsessed”. For Zing, the appeal was more than just the look of the jacket, “knowing so much about the brand, all the history of it, all the nuances of it, I really got into the details of the clothes. How they are pieced together and constructed intrigued me even more.”
Zing stopped counting how many jackets he had when he got to 300. Predominantly ready-to-wear but with plenty of couture as well, in its entirety the collection spans from the 1950s and ‘60s to the most recent Chanel show. Yet when we speak, it is clear that the years of Karl Lagerfeld drives much of Zing’s focus. “AW in both 1988 and 1989 was good. AW96 was also fantastic. AW11 was great. SS13 was good. I loved Paris-Moscou. I loved Edinburgh in 2013. Cosmopolite I liked very much. Paris-Salzburg in 2015 was great,” he tells me when I enquire into the ultimate Chanel collection.
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As he lists each show, I am impressed by his expansive knowledge, but I am not surprised. I found Zing via a mention on Chanel’s website that led me to his Instagram account @curated_by_zing, a visual logbook of pieces from his collection, in which each photo is captioned with a fashion history lesson of the story behind the jacket, the collection, and the construction.
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“I just want to share them with people who like Chanel jackets as well” he explains. Ranging from an AW96 gold lamé brocade and silk matelassé jacket; exhibited at The Met, seen on Lady Gaga and featured in Vogue on Stella Tennant and Linda Evangelista, to an AW11 trompe-l’œil black lace jacket adorned with desrues jewelled buttons, the account displays just a handful of the couture and Ready-To-Wear jackets Zing has so meticulously accumulated. For Zing, “[the collection] doesn’t affect how I keep my clothes because I put them mainly by colours. I put the blacks together, I put the colourful ones together, maybe the blues together, the reds together, the golds together, the leathers together.”
Since Virginie Viard took over the reins at Chanel, Zing is relieved to see she is an “extension of Karl”. But, he adds, “She likes a more feminine silhouette … she makes her clothes of a smaller size, so the sizing has gone up on these new collections compared to most of Karl’s, which were slightly bigger.”
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And despite the fact that Lagerfeld interspersed menswear into many of his collections, Zing isn’t about to shift to menswear any time soon. “[Men’s jackets] are always minimised. I’d rather have the extravagance over correct sizing. Sometimes they’re a little off proportion because women have a shorter torso. So, everything is slightly lifted. The waistline will be slightly off proportion, so slightly higher. It lifts you without it being off proportion, it makes it more interesting”. It is fitting that when I ask how wearing a Chanel jacket makes him feel, he tells me, “I feel very uplifted”.
by Lily Rimmer