The latest fashion muse in China is not an influencer, nor a breakout movie star, but a mathematician.

Wang Hong, a 35-year-old Chinese mathematician, shot to fame on Chinese social media this year after winning a Fields Medal — also known as the Nobel Prize of mathematics.

Wang’s look at the award ceremony last week — a sleek black pantsuit, Lindberg glasses, a white T-shirt and Clash de Cartier necklace — quickly drew the attention of the fashion crowd on Xiaohongshu, China’s popular social commerce platform.

A short documentary published by the Simons Foundation, a major sponsor of the Fields Medal, offered a closer look into Wang’s understated wardrobe, featuring a Canada Goose down puffer, The Row tote bag, Johnston of Elgin sweater, On Running shoes and an Oura Ring. The brands also benefited from a wave of exposure on Chinese social media, as consumers began dissecting and recreating the mathematician’s “academic chic” aesthetic.

The Clash de Cartier necklace and ring — the most geometrically distinctive pieces of Wang’s look — reportedly sold out at several local stores at one point, according to posts on Xiaohongshu.

“You can’t afford the same brain, so buy the same necklace,” JD.com, the e-commerce platform that counts an official Cartier store, wrote on social media, promoting the 36,000 renminbi, or $5,316, necklace.

Wang’s sudden rise on Chinese social media offers a glimpse into shifting consumer preferences, inspiring a new online style vocabulary partly rooted in the “hot nerd” trend — a movement that has helped drive interest in fashion and luxury brands such as Miu Miu, Saint Laurent and Ralph Lauren.

Inspired by Wang, terms including “long-termism,” “new old money style,” “genius girl fashion,” “academic chic” and “high-intelligence dressing” quickly gained traction online as her fashion style marked a clear departure from the traditional image of the “scientific genius” in Chinese popular culture — often portrayed as intensely focused “mad scientists” who are too detached from the commercial world to care for brand-coded styles.

The Fields Metal is awarded to mathematicians under 40 every four years. Wang was primarily recognized for her work on the three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture, which solved a century-old mat problem.

The breakthrough helps mathematicians better understand the limits of how much information can be compressed and can further facilitate technology development for medical imaging, such as CT and MRI scans, and voice recognition.

After winning the award, French President Emmanuel Macron posted a video on X showing him congratulating Wang, who obtained an engineering degree at the École Polytechnique and a master’s degree from Paris-Sud University.

“Choose France for science,” Macron wrote on the X post.

Wang’s story also brings to light luxury brands’ long-standing investments in academia and intellectual fields.

In June, Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH, donated 50 million euros through his family holding company, Agache, to his alma mater, École Polytechnique. And Rolex has maintained a nearly seven-decade partnership with CERN, the particle physics lab in Europe.

In China, Blancpain launched the Blancpain-Imaginist Literary Prize in 2018.