Design Statement

Yanting Yao

I like Minimal, but not limited to be as less as possible. For me, minimal is another form of enrich. Shopping was one of my habit, and that keeps my strong relationship with clothing and fashion, and that extend my passion. For many people, clothes don’t have other meaning rather than a piece of fabric that covers your body, it categorized as a functional object. But for me is another form of art. It is about creativity, there is personality and story involve. For most of times, I get inspirations from myself, my memory and the things I have seen before can triggered me: a feeling that suddenly jump into my mind, a painting that have great color combination, a movie, a song, or a little detail from another garment, etc. I like to see myself from my design, that is more tangible to me.

I don’t really consider myself as a fashion designer, in my definition a real designer is someone like Raf Simons. But I like design, my design philosophy is always coming from a simple thing, and the how to maintain the simplicity and meanwhile elevating into a more composite form. So the construction of a garment is what I always trying to push into my design although it is not easy to achieve. And then, there is color. I like black, it is the most harmonious color, it makes good combination with others. I like to use solid color; I would also apply prints, but they are more like an element to delight my design. I like work with fabric, I have passion on hunting fabrics, in my philosophy the right fabric is the first success of a good design. I would also spend time with textile and material exploration because I like to discover how fabrics enhances the design. Therefore, I am obsessed with details. For me, each finishing and stitches that been applied to the design can makes a huge difference, so I would take big consideration on this part during my design process. Sketching is important, because after design, we need a media to visualized that and also to communicate. However, don’t put much time on sketching, perhaps I really need to work on something physically.

Design, is also a problem-solving process for me. I have to say that from these years of studying, the learning experiences I have gained formed me into a more patient and painstaking person. Which is a good thing, because in real life, things are not easy as well.