Avant–garde fashion accessories on show in Beijing

[Photo provided to China Daily]

The music box he designed while working at MB&F, a Geneva-based company, breaks the traditional understanding of such objects. In his design, he involved a series of futuristic music boxes inspired by the Star Wars films.

Maximilian Busser, founder of MB&F, once used the word "creator" to describe Wang.

Michael Goo, founder of Tru-M, says Wang's designs are clean and show a kind of minimalism.

"In a way many of his ideas come from nature," Goo says.

The kind of coolness in Wang's designs comes from his fascination with science.

Unlike many other designers who have backgrounds in art, Wang has been influenced by physics. He won the top prize in an important competition in middle school and studied physics in Peking University for four years.

"As a fundamental science, physics teaches me how to look at the world and understand it. It's a good way of thinking," he says.

After college, Wang went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to learn design, which he thought was a quick way to create things. But in physics, he says it always takes a long time to finish creating something.

He went to Switzerland after graduation and became a designer for many luxury watch brands. A watch he designed for Piaget, based on the theme of cities along the ancient Silk Road, won the Artistic Crafts Watch prize last year at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Geneve, a prize labeled the "Oscars of watches".

Wang says it's very hard for Chinese designers to get noticed and win recognition in Switzerland, where art and design are dominated by Europeans. But in recent years, with the strengthening of the Chinese economy and the fashion market in the country, some Chinese designers have had the chance to stand out on the international stage.