Lee has made an anniversary 101 collection with Feng Chen Wang

To celebrate the 101st year of its iconic 101 silhouette, American denim pioneer Lee has collaborated with London-based designer Feng Chen Wang on a limited bamboo-inspired capsule.

The collection is a fusion of east-west fashion, steeped in history, taking classic denim forms and reinventing them using Chinese bamboo as inspiration, both materials elegantly towing the line between strength and flexibility. It’s a marriage of structure and freedom, like how both forms bend and bounce back to retain their original silhouette. 

Although the collection celebrates Lee’s classic 101 silhouette, originally introduced in 1925, it is a true reinvention fit for contemporary culture. The pieces — spanning across menswear and womenswear — are deliberately baggy and oversized in proportion, but the jackets and jeans retain the original cinch back and double-leather patch which made them so iconic in the first place.

The starting point for the collection is Lee’s original 101 Jeans and 101J Rider Jacket, which Feng Chen Wang has put a modern eastern twist on with her bamboo patterns. By using techniques such as tie-dye and laser print, Wang ensures exclusivity across the collection — no two pieces being exactly the same.

The menswear hero piece is a denim jacket with enlarged exoskeleton seams — which comes in both light and dark wash — but the collection is rounded off with jeans and a bamboo-embroidered t-shirt for a complete Canadian tuxedo look. As for womenswear, the jeans feature a dramatic double-leg panel with details taken from the OG 101J Rider Jacket, whilst an asymmetric denim skirt takes inspiration from both cowboy culture and Chinese nature, using bamboo leaf print and an exaggerated raw fringe. A true east-meets-west take on denim.