There are five research directions that I’m interested in diving in:

1.Romantic vintage clothing with delicate fabrics.

One of my biggest habits from my childhood is taking adventure in my mother’s closet, she carefully preserved a positive amount of clothing from her era (mainly 80s and 90s) and delicate garments which are from even earlier period. I used to touch these well-made fabrics and clothing structures and smell the mysterious scent from these vintage clothes. Long skirts have always been my favorite items, not only because I’m not confident with the shape of my lower body part but also the quality it shows: Conservative, feminine and dynamic at the same time, I also appreciate the fluidity skirts bring, especially within layers of fabrics.

2. Animals and fur

Personally I’m a big fan of cute animals, I always feel mentally cured when I interact with small animals like rabbits, birds and cats and I’m obsessed with their appearance and their humanlike yet pure personalities. Sometimes people like to describe a person with certain kind of animals, probably the described one obtain some similar characteristics, this is very interesting to me because

3.Futurism

I always have a lot of fantasy toward the future and I believe that garments have the ability to show the sense of future through different materials.

4.Optical illusion and extreme color

I’m easily getting tired of vivid colors so normally I don’t purchase any colorful items. I believe if I want to build up a sophisticated closet system, I have to abandon a lot of choices and stick with my own aesthetics. In terms of my daily outfit, I don’t wear anything that exposes my body shapes and I’m insisted with black and white color. However, due to the monotonous characteristics these two colors bring, manipulations seemed to be much more charming on them, when it comes to overlapping or combing these two colors followed by certain sequence, it is easy to capture the audience’s attention.

5. Movies, fantasy and dreams

In my spare time, I love watching movies and my favorite director is Kon Satoshi. All of Kon’s works present an in-between ideas: Justice and Evil, Love and Hate, Reality and Dreams. Kon’s films are well known to bend the mind’s of his characters to the point of break, often balancing between the realm of reality and dream/illusion in his storytelling. His works are psychological focused, a lot of them are horror based, and all of them are brilliant in their own way. I’m also eager to creative a collection which is able to transfer this sort of idea –  “On the edge of dreams”. It’s absolutely challenging for me to demonstrate this abstract idea and my thoughts through the media of garments but hopefully I would find my way on my future research path. In my collection, I aim to present the feeling of dreams – By utilizing specific colors and materials.

All of these fives themes are based on my personal interest, aesthetics and hobbits therefore I have a lot of passion to do more research about them.

I remember very clearly, at the beginning of the semester, I wrote down ‘Fashion is a circulation, it repeats itself through different eras.’ as the first sentence on my small paper of in-class writing. Indeed, I still hold this idea that fashion is the reflection of represent certain period of time, certain groups of people and certain sorts of inspirations. Meanwhile, my friends who set next to me brought up the ideas of ‘Fashion is an identification’ and ‘Fashion is another form of our bodies’ which I also agreed with. Although the rest of our responses had quite a lot of common points, I guess my initial idea of time period toward fashion attributed to my habit – Purchasing vintage clothes, and I prefer to hang out with people who have similar taste on fashion with me, which is a human instinct, People tend to build up closer relationships with their peers. Last but not least, personal I believe any artificial form has a reference originated from the nature, therefore inspirations are one of the original powers that drive fashion through history.

When we were talking about gender, nation, subculture, etc during classes, the ideas I listed above appeared again and again. For now, I want to start answering this question a bit more personally – I think fashion is an oracle of human wisdom and it belongs to those who stay steadfast in their beliefs. This is not what I learnt from this class but from my internship, I got the chance to witness the tremendous hardworking that is happening in this industry and now I feel like I want to explain fashion in a more down to earth and realistic way.

“Remote Control”

This dress was shown in the space section at FIT museum and it is considered one of my favorites. I got to know this dress when I was researching “futurism fashion”on Pinterest 2 years ago, I was amazed and shocked by its’ unpredictable movement after I watched the video of that fashion show later on. In terms of  the space section in this show, it introduces young fashion designers of the 1960s became enamored with the “Space Age,” which began with the 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik and ended with NASA’s last moon mission, in 1972. Hussein Chalayan’s designs are always conceptual and futuristic, just like watching a high-rated science fiction – you never know what idea he will come out for his next show.

The appearance of this dress was inspired by airplane, it has side and rear flaps that open to reveal a mass of frothy pink tulle. While these flaps are operated manually in this model, in the original they were operated mechanically by remote control. The prototype was itself a permutation of two earlier models in which Chalayan explored ideas about the relationship between nature, culture, and technology. This dress not only looks futuristically but also function as the same way, I believe it is one of the most attractive garments that can be called avant grade and continuously maintain its influence to any audience.

I’d like to say I’m a kind of person who resists to specific dress code, for me, I prefer to dress in  limited colors (black & white) and certain dressing style (formal dressing), I definitely have lists in my mind recording the brands I appreciate or the style I try to avoid, also in my everyday life I’m always aware of the clothes I’m wearing and the feeling they have brought to me. I personally believe garments have enormous vitality, they’re documenting wearers’ stories therefore abandoning clothes is one of the most unforgivable practice.

After a seven-day document of my daily clothing, I found out the clothes I was wearing aren’t alluring anymore compared to the first time I saw them in stores while I was browsing my pictures, although they’re still clean and preserved in a good condition and they used to be the ones I desired so much that I have to save my budgets for time. I guess my clothes are starting to blend in my daily life after I purchased them, and wearing them no longer triggers my excitement – and I think this is one of the important reasons I keep pursuing new clothes. However, a new feeling has come to me within these clothes which is comfort.

Another discovery is my misunderstanding of my style: My friends kept telling me I dressed super formally then I naturally felt like the same way. However, while I was preparing my clothes for my internship, I recognized I was not able to find anything ‘professional’ out of my whole closet, instead, I’d like to describe my closet’s style as ‘playful’. I always want to wear whatever I want but there’re always limitations, I have to deal with the social relationship and take care of others’ perspective towards me. – Or Maybe because I’m just still not brave enough.

“I wanted to portray that feeling of first experiences with fashion, like a kid is experimenting with their look for the first time” – Jonny Johansson.

Acne Studio, a multidisciplinary luxury fashion house founded in the year of 1996, released a series of “genderless” propaganda/advertisement by featuring founder’s 11-year-old son Frasse  for its 2015 AW collection. This series of photographs not only challenges the traditional idea of  how people from specific gender are supposed to dress, but also the ages. In the photos, Frasse is wearing a long peach puff color wool coat with nipped waist, a pair of patent leather boots with silver chunky high heels and carrying a ladylike handbag. Acne Studios is trying to promote the concept that the new way of dressing is to experiment just as children do.

“Style fashion-dress as a system of concepts conveys a sense that people create their own ‘fashion statement’ but are ultimately constrained by what is available in the marketplace, by dress codes and social conventions, by political regimes and the like.” (Susan B. Kaiser, 2012) Indeed, our daily outfits are strictly limited by the surroundings- our society however while our society is developing significantly, people become more and more acceptable to rising ideas. In fashion, for instance, the boundary between genders tend to be more vague than any time, the idea of “Androgyny” is no longer unfamiliar. In my perspectives, fashion has no limitations, fashion is forgivable, and fashion is interested in every innovated possibilities that pop up in people’s everyday life. I have even imagined that any one is able to wear anything without judge in recent future.

1. “Fashion moves in space and time. It shares the complexity of physics and mathematics, making patterns and networks, forming mazes and constellations. Through its forms we have an opportunity to re-unite art and science and to heal the rift of the two cultures.”

Fashion connects with everything, in another word, anything connects with everything. In fashion world, there is a variety of experts who are specialized in different areas, for instance, Issey Miyake, a master of combining both features of paper folding and fabrics, which are structural and fluid, mathematics and the nature. However, I disagree the saying of fashion is an envoy of peace through science and art because fashion does have a tendency towards art whether it’s modern, superficial or “old-fashion”.

1. “Fashion is intensely personal, in the same way the poetry is intensely personal. It is a medium through which personal stories can be told, memories re-lived and futures foretold.”

The clothes we put on our bodies everyday reveal our habits, interests, tastes and even personalities and so on. Even when I was discussing with my fellow classmate about fashion we tend to hold completely different perspectives: I perceive fashion as  circulation, trends go back and forward, fashion never gets tired; while she believed fashion is what currently happening, one of the social phenomenons. In terms of myself, I’m not able to predict how my dress style will change in the future but I sticks to the concept of minimalism – to limit colors and numbers of layers of my daily dressing.

Inspired by pillow-case pattern, pattern made by Adobe Illustrator.      Draping of 1/4 scale size and full size.

Final Photoshoot:

In this project, the requirement is to make a skirt our of boxes with irregular shapes. When I was making the box, I thought about the shape of skirt so I tried to use a lot of triangles in order to manifest a sense of sharpness, also, I made my box symmetrical which is easies for me to make pattern later.

The Initial box:

After making two muslin prototype, I chose this navy and beige fabric to show the idea of unisex.

Final Photoshoot:

Paper Sculpture – Nostalgia (Emotion)

As for the original paper sculpture, I’m trying to make it looks delicate and fragile in order to manifest a sense of nostalgia, which is also sad in some extent. According to classmates feedback, most of people thought it was fragile, energetic and it has its’ motion.

In the first draping prototype I’m attempting to show a contrast between pleats and a hole in a circle shape, however, the pleats were too hard to keep in shape so I gave up this idea.

Final garment.