It’s been just over a year since Fangyán’s successful pop-up at Concept 31/M ended, and now the brand is planning to open its first brick-and-mortar location in DC, bringing Asian-inspired fashion to the heart of Georgetown this summer.
“For us, as an emerging fashion brand, opening a store [in Georgetown] means a lot,” says Ken Ding, general manager of the brand. “It’s a chance to introduce Chinese designers to the public.”
Fangyán means “dialect” in Chinese. Simin Zhu, Fangyán’s president and head of design, says the name represents the diversity of the Chinese language and pays homage to various Chinese designers, whose creations make up the brand. Fangyán, which specializes in women’s dresses, curates clothes from 15 high-end Chinese designers. Ding says their clothes are for people who don’t want to see the same outfit on anybody else. “That’s the reason they visit us,” he says.
While in the pop-up space 31/M, they were able to introduce the Fangyán brand to DC. (Their Montgomery Mall location opened in 2022.) As a result, Ding says, their customer base expanded to include more American women looking for fresh professional workwear. Ding says they also expect their designs to speak to college students, abundant in the neighborhood, who may be drawn in by the creativity of the clothes.
All the brands Fangyán features have slightly different styles, but the overarching theme of the clothes is storytelling, Ding says. Mukzin, a famous Chinese brand founded by Kate Han and George Feng, uses Asian symbols like tigers, dragons, and manga comics to take a modern twist on traditional Asian silhouettes. One dress, a favorite of Ding’s, portrays a dragon helping people whose village flooded. Other designers are also modernizing traditional Asian fashion by lowering necklines and shortening the length of dresses like the traditional cheongsam.
Fangyán is expected to open June 3 at 1057 Wisconsin Ave., NW.
Keely recently graduated with her master’s in journalism from American University and has reported on local DC, national politics, and business. She has previously written for The Capitol Forum.
