PAPER x JW Blue Lunar New Year with Robert Wun
Angel Au
I was invited to document PAPER Magazine and Johnnie Walker Blue Label's first-ever Lunar New Year celebration, held at the lavish Living Room lounge at the W Hotel Union Square in New York City. The evening also marked the opening night of New York Fashion Week — a convergence that set the tone for a night where fashion, culture, and luxury all moved together in the same room.
The Robert Wun × Johnnie Walker Blue Label Year of the Horse limited-edition bottle is the 13th bottle in the brand's Lunar New Year series and the first to be designed by a haute couturier. Rendered in deep cobalt blue with kinetic lines and flowing couture forms, Wun's design depicts a horse running free alongside a figure in Robert Wun couture, the fabric billowing forward in motion. It was a deliberate choice: as Wun has described, he didn't want to show someone riding the horse. He wanted it unrestrained. "The horse represents forward motion, freedom and strength," he explained. "Rather than charging against the wind, it moves with it." That philosophy was visible not just on the bottle but in the energy of the entire evening.
All three specialty cocktails were made with JW Blue Label
Working an event of this nature requires reading the room as much as it requires technical skill. The Living Room lounge had the warmth of a private gathering and the electricity of a cultural moment, and my job was to hold both at once. My primary focus was editorial coverage of the bottle and the evening's signature cocktails — finding compositions that honored Wun's design without flattening it into a product shot, letting the ambient light of the space interact with the cobalt glass and the flowing lines of the artwork. I was equally focused on documenting guests as they moved through the night: the ease of a conversation over a pour, hands wrapped around a glass, the instinctive pleasure of being somewhere that felt considered and celebratory at the same time.
The event carried an intentionality that made the work feel meaningful beyond the assignment itself. All hired talent — DJs, photographers — were Asian, a reflection of the evening's commitment to authentic cultural representation rather than surface-level celebration. That choice was felt in the room. PAPER Magazine President Jason Ve introduced honorary guest Kevin Woo, who arrived fresh off the success of KPop Demon Hunters, and performed "Soda Pop" live from the film. It was one of those moments that shifts the energy in a space — the kind a photographer has to anticipate before it happens and move through without interrupting.
This kind of coverage asks for a dual attention: the stillness required to document an object as carefully designed as the Wun bottle, and the instinct required to follow a night as it builds and breaks open. The final images offer a complete visual narrative — the bottle and cocktails as art objects, the people who gathered around them, and the atmosphere of a Lunar New Year celebration that understood what it meant to honor the occasion.
