She Lost a View But Gained a Gallery

Construction of a hotel next door to Han Feng’s loft covered her east-facing windows, so she came up with a plan.

- Wendy Goodman

I FIRST VISITED Han Feng’s Flower District loft for one of her spectacular multi-course dinner parties, where she would always have a mix of fashion, theater, and art people from her circle. Back then, it was drenched with light from a series of windows looking east.

She grew up in Nanjing and Hangzhou during the Cultural Revolution in China—“I was thinking I should get a factory job,” she says— and studied graphic design at the China Academy of Art. She came to New York in 1985. In 1993 she launched a ready-to-wear line, and in 1997 she rented this sunny loft, which she would later buy. Along the way, she designed the costumes for Anthony Minghella’s Madam Butterfly, which debuted in London with the English National Opera in 2005 and was later performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and became an expert in Chinese contemporary art, which she collects and advises other people on collecting.