Image Archive

Inspiration:

Real life things (Emotion)

Architecture (Construction)

Environment (Story)

Painting (Color/Tension)

illustration by Marcela Ghirardelli

I feel a sense of blooming, the heart of art.

Brushstrokes Cut into Forty-Nine Squares and Arranged by Chance.

By Ellsworth Kelly

It is an interesting image, very simple, those inks they are just brushstrokes, but l like the randomness here.

Apostrophe

Photographers – Travis Rathbone

Taking elements from the real life, and then become a 2D pattern.

For the first time, the raw fish doesn’t look so ugly.

Studio of Light,

Courtesy of Tadao Ando Architect & Associates

Geometrical shape, a sense of futurism.

random-brilliance.tumblr.com

The color of the shadow of a surface. Combine this with the pure color and black or any other color.

 table-trunk by Andrey khvorostyanov

I like the clean, hard, colored geometry of the top in contrast with the more organic twisting and undulating lines of the sides of this stool/table.

Bent Wooden Chair Design Japanese design studio Nendo

Perfection.

Skin Fawn by Ryan Estep

Little hope is coming out, little life and little sunshine, it can grow bigger.

Photo by Line Thit Klein

very contemporary Japanese style decoration, I like the composition and the color theory here, very nude and natural feeling, and I also really appreciate the craftsmanship of these plates.

JEAN DUNAND Lidded box,

circa 1925 Lacquered oroide inlaid with mother-of-pearl and eggshell. 5.7 cm (2 1/4 in) high, 12.1 cm (4 3/4 in) diameter Underside stamped with ‘JEAN DUNAND’

Geometrical elements, and I like the texture of the surface.

Mexican Modernist architect

By Luis Barragan who is one of the most influential architects of the 20th century, he was known for his mastery of color, and space, and light.

Gallery of Galaxy Soho in Beijing, by Zaha hadid

I like the infinitive mood of the architecture, pushed the boundaries of architecture and urban design. It makes me feel like the building has fluid, and there is no limitation.

insidewarp.tumblr.com

 the yellow. It raises a sense of free to me.

Jackson Pollock

The famous ‘Drip and Splash’style, I can feel there is tension and power, also force.

The color is also very impressive.

Painting by Francis Picabia – les dessins

We live in a three-dimensional world, everything should have many aspects, and different interpretations. Try to observe things different could open another window.

Harbin Opera House

The modern architecture interiors, the context between modern and natural, the feeling is really addicted to minimal but meanwhile it is not simple, so clean that makes mefeels like somewhere from paradise.

Painting from Mark Rothko

I like this painting, because it gives me a sense of hope: when almost the whole frame is covered in black, there is still a brush on red (hope), and it is fresh, it is strong.

Twisted Tree Branches Fused with Ornate Picture Frames by Darryl Cox

life extension.

Ricardo Bofill’s utopian vision for social living in Sant Just Desvern, Spain.

I like the color, very striking, the photo also discovers a community-minded building that turned science fiction into harmonious fact.

liferuin,

by David Maljkovic

it makes me feel very stressful and been limited

Part 2

Photo by myself at Centre Pompidou

Key: construction and color, industrialized design.

Photo by myself at Whitney Museum

Light and stairs, space and constructions.

Old stamps and chops made in Hong Kong.

Traditional China café, Dim Sum spot in HongKong at 1980.

photo at 1959, Hongkong.

Hong Kong 1970’s. Photograph by Greg Girard

History and cultural background is always something that influenced me.

Photo by myself in New York.

Multi-tonal brick facade of New York City apartment. I have always loved brick façades. The depth of the façade and rectangular windows look great.

These are shoots that my friends did in HONGKONG, it is a very local area when the buildings are quite old, again I feel a sense of life here, with time and story.

mrharristweed.tumblr.com

There are windows and air conditions. When I looked at this image, I was imagining the living conditions behind these windows, they are variously different, however they might present a similar lifestyle, it is very closely to life and living and humanity.

josephcarinicarpets.com

Color blocking

twitter.com

Yellow Wall of building, White concrete stone steps. Great modern architecture photography.

Stanbul’s Colourful Minimalist Architecture by Yener Torun

I love the bright color combinations and the white wall is very outstanding. However, the focal point of this image to me is the people with red umbrella.

painting by Franz Kline

Abstraction and illusion.

Photo by myself. 

Photos by ,myself while traveling.

Red and Grey is a combination that reminds me of my cultural religion, what is inside me and where I am coming from. Everyone have different background, and it should be really impactful to who you are. 

Winter inn Beijing. Vivid gray, traditional gray.

Photos by myself.

Lazy and cozy

Photos by myself.

There is a sense of innocence in these two images which makes me kind envy about, sometimes I feel like it is too fast to grow up and we suddenly lost all the innocences through growth.

Photos by myself.

Life, color, sunshine and light, positive energy.

Photos by myself.

Perspective.

I like to travel and I am more enjoy to take photos while traveling, everyday is a new experience and I think these memories/information is very important to each individual, and it is also a very useful way for me to build up my personal archives.

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.

What is fashion?

In the beginning of the semester, we were been asked this question, what is fashion? Through a whole semester’s study, for me the idea of fashion is expanding, and fashion has related to many things. We talked about fashion, style and dress, and the difference between each one is so little but significant. From the shallow aspect, fashion is clothing and it should have its functionality. Through the dress practice log assignment, I realized how you decided to dress yourself through clothing is actually a big concerned which I had not noticed before, it need to have strong connection with your schedules, location, environment, even the mood and other people. Fashion is defined by style, and style is such a personal thing that could be influenced by many reasons, various from your personal background, your cultural aesthetic, your age, your favorite color, your social status, etc.

After watch the film “Dior and I”, my interpretation of fashion has even gone deeper: fashion could be a 3D wearable form of art. Except of its functional purpose as a clothes, for high-end level of design, fashion needs defiantly go beyond clothing, what Raf Simons is exploring is also an visual experiment to art. Before, I would agree that fashion is about trendy, what is fashioning right now is the key tense to fashion, but learning from two of our guest speakers in the lecture class, fashion can be unique style, instead of following the new trend one can defiantly fashion through old and vintage items. Fashion is about one’s individual clothing style, but fashion could also associated to a group of people and even uniformity. Fashion is image, but is also a nonverbal language; fashion can be described as one’s lifestyle, then it goes beyond clothing, a fashionable lifestyle with aesthetics is something that many people is aiming for. Fashion is a word and also a world, it is something that makes people feel exciting but also makes people afraid about. Fashion is something that changes various from culture to culture, you can find the similarity but yet they are so different.

The idea about fashion and aging is fascinating. People do afraid of being aged, even though is it human natural to be old. Before, in my mind fashion is really more of a youth oriented cultural field. As Julia Twigg writes in her article “Fashion, the Body, and Age”, when she brought in the idea about aging in fashion, she also states “In relation to high fashion, aging sets in early, certainly by the late twenties.”[1] And she also marked “Fashion is strongly, perhaps inherently youth oriented. It is beautiful, young bodies that designers aspire to dress and that are featured throughout the fashion system.”[2] In this industry, what we have all assumed the ideal type of women that most designers are targeting for would be a young woman who has a perfect body, silhouette, and performance. However, the boundary seems shifted, getting older doesn’t means you have to follow the strict dressing rules and covering your arms. Therefore, record from this whole semester’s study, the idea has totally changed: When we had Debra Rapoport came to speak at class, and she defiantly explored the role of clothing and dress in the changing cultural identities of older women. She absolute had show to me that there is something sophisticated and elegant that could be brought out with the fashion and age.

Footnotes:

[1] Julia Twigg, Fashion, the Body, and Age, <The Hand Book of Fashion Studies>,(London: Bloomsbury,2013), 79.

[2] Julia Twigg, Fashion, the Body, and Age, <The Hand Book of Fashion Studies>,(London: Bloomsbury,2013), 81.

For this practice assignment, I did document my dress for a whole week, and it was actually quite hard and annoying to remember all of that, but it was fun as well. And this assignment kind helped to shape this idea about “You are what you wear. ” There are many psychologists argued about this phenomenon in fashion, which they called “psychology of dress”, you are what you wear, and I think it not about how you feel to be in those clothes but rather than how you want to feel. From this assignment, I am actually questioning myself do I have a typical personal style? The answer is unknown for me. I can’t say that I do have a specially style for myself, but somehow the clothes I am wearing every day delivers a kinds of personality of me. So for this question, I would rather say that one does developed his/her clothing personality through the way to exploring themselves, during this process the most important is to developing self-confidence and a sense of comfort and satisfaction with yourself. It helps in crafting an image of you. The way you dress and project yourself is a way of communicating your personality, values and lifestyle to the world around you. And also after this assignment, I realized how is your daily schedule would be so influential toward how you goanna dress yourself for the entire day. For example, if it were a school day, I would actually dress myself as casual as I can, not much stylish thing involved rather than the comfort ability. And I mentioned about my big black canvas bag, sometimes I just didn’t realized how useful it is for me. And it’s a black colored actually have a reason, not just because I like this color, but more about interns of it’s function it must be a black one so it won’t gets dirty easily. I took a photo which just showed my new earing, and I like this one so much, because it hit the idea of accessories. The world of fashion is not limited to clothing. It includes end number of items. For dressing and styling, accessories is a big part that could support your overall style of the day, and sometimes it’s role could even beyond it’s position as a small accessories but a high light of your day’s style. There are many people would likes to play the idea of accessories, earing, ring, handbag, ties, and many other different kinds.

At Material Connexion, I found many interesting materials,  many of them have fascinating concepts, and they also have many collaborations with many famous companies, like BMW, PUMA, etc. At first I thought some of them are not so realistic in production and manufacturing,  Later as I found out, most of them are provided by companies, which means they are actually doable. I particularly love some of the ideas which carries an eco-friendly concept behind, to me they are more attractive.

From these hundreds of material samples, I found few that I was very drawn into the idea and concepts.

the first one this piece of leather. Without reading the information below, I would really consider it as a normal leather since the texture is really alike, and when you touch it, it feels very alike as well. It is leather, but it is actually made from salmon skin. I doubt many people like me would not realized that salmon skin is a repurposed by-product, and it can be used to created premium exotic leather. I remember while I was doing researching few weeks before, I looked up many research information and articles about leather, and all of them hit many about how it is harmful for the animals, and how leather producing process is damaging the environment. What is more friendly about this is that this piece of salmon skin is a waste from  fish canneries, the manufacturer has developed a low environmental impact process to tank and dye the salmon skin while retaining their pigmentation and texture.

This is also another leather-like example that are made by 100% eelskin, which has a smooth surface, and it is quite strong for its thickness. And for this piece, what attracted me is actually this yellowish color.

The another material is this piece. This one looks like an art pieces that hangs in an art gallery, it gives a sense of exotic feeling, like something that you could find in Mid-East countries. I was doing many weaving textile exploring during these weeks, so this id defiantly   draws my interests. It is a handloom fabric that was produced from recycled newspapers. The manufacturer dyed those newspaper sheets into different color, and cut them into strips with different sizes, and hand loomed them on a machine. I think many of us, actually all of us can easily find many of this kinds of wasted newspapers sheets, or any other unwanted papers, but we didn’t realized they are actually useful, it can makes up such a beautiful interior accessories.

I did many fabrication exploration with denim and indigo color, so I kind interested in these two as well.

This first one is made from natural ingredients, and used an ancient technique to dyed the fabric, which only used indigo leaves, wood-ash, limestone and wheat bran. Therefore, all the wastes that are produced from this process are recycled back as fertilizer. 

this one is a hand-woven textile composed of cotton blended with wild. It is also dyed via natural materials that derived from plants and tree bark.

Tilda Swinton was the face of Chanel ‘s crampon in 2013, because of her long relationship with the label, and Scottish heritage, it’s not surprising that Karl shot Tilda for Chanel’s ‘Paris-Edimbourg’ Métiers d’Art campaign back in 2013. “Tilda perfectly embodies the Paris-Edimbourg collection,” said Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld. “She is of course Scottish, but more than that, she is a modern woman, a timeless icon of elegance.” In this picture, the sense of Androgynous is fill-in the frame, there are few A-listers who can pull off androgynous dressing quite as masterfully as Tilda Swinton. Her lithe frame, astute eyes, and gorgeous shock of hair are the perfect fit for the gender-fluid designs. I read this sentence in the book, ‘Gender is actually not just who we are; it is what we do or perform as we participate in an embodied way with cultural discourses.”（Susan Kaiser, Fashion and Cultural Studies, 2012) According to the cultural background that I am coming from, gender becomes your first identity of who you are and who you are going to be from the moment you born. But now, especially in fashion industry, the boundary line of gender is shifting: your biological gender might be your first identity, but you still are free to create your own identity, through your personal style, your makeup, your personality, etc. Tilda Swinton has said that people unfamiliar with her often refer to the actress as “Sir” because of her height, lack of lipstick, and overall appearance. I think gender blending is not a new concept, there is something fascinating about somebody who is not bound by the expectations of their sex.

Bibliography:

Susan Kaiser, Fashion and Cultural Studies, ( London: Berg, 2012), 121-135

Week 1, in-class reading <Foreword>–Christopher Breward

“Fashion is gossip. Never underestimate the power of gossip. Semiologists are driven into ecstasies of supposition by its whispers.”

There is always many things happening in the fashion world, not just only about clothing and style: There is runway show and fashion week, there is always praises and prejudices. Fashion people are very capricious, as well as the fashion trends. Therefore, we can not ignore the fact that people love gossip: “never underestimate the power of gossip”, the small flame of gossip its very easily especially in today’s world, there are so many ways to spread it. This sentence also reminds me of one phenomena that happens very open these days among fashion world: for advertising purpose, brand use the power of celebrities to popularize the brand, from one person to the general public. Fashion needs topic, fashion needs to be in public, so fashion needs gossip.

“Fashion can be about confirmation, of self and others.”

For many individual people, fashion might not be what is happening in the runway show this season, and did those fashion editors say about this denim jacket, etc. Fashion is about what looks best on you, the style that makes you feel comfortable and confident, and most importantly is that it will please you.

Fashion sometimes is the way of how you discover and confirmed yourself in visual. It can be say that fashion is a strong and trendy communication tool, is part of  the essential in our life now: how you want to dress yourself have strong association with how you want other view you. Fashion delivers massages, it go beyond clothing, and it is a representation of you, your personality, aesthetic, and maybe even social status.

The idea about this project is all about sustainable.

So, I got many fabric samples that are left over, they come in different color, texture, thickness, even different type and size.

For this project, I got inspirations from the “patch” design, and it is really related to the outcomes of this project which is sustainable as well. So I want to make an enough amount of fabric by splice and joint those fabric samples together, and it may be applied via zigzag stitches, or top stitches.

To begin, I started with cut off the big pieces of fabric, and make them into small size, and use pearl machine to finish all the edges because the pearl stitches could gives the edges a more irrelevant, and because of the tightness of the stitches, it creates a wavy shape to the edges.

i made my pattern with  a raglan sleeves

then i use heavy organza to made the lining.

working process

sewing all patch pieces together to create the silhouette of coat

and the sleeves 

and set up the collar

this is me trying the coat.

Final looks on model

Front

pocket detail

Back

Patch work details

For this project, I want to make a real simple pant, straight shape with solid color. And i got inspirations from those chic and minimalist style.

I measured myself, then combine it with the regular size 6 sloper and make necessary changes to it.

And i did fitting on the muslin version.

after get the pattern done, i commented to a grey superwool fabric which give a smooth texture on the surface, and it has a little stretches.

and i serged the edge of the seam.

I sewn all the parts together, pocket, zipper, and the front& back piece, but expect the two side.

Then i got another yard of white satin fabric, and i applied tie dye to it.

then i cut two “Godet” piece on this fabric, and wanted to add them to the two sides of my pants.

i used bias tape to do the finishing.

and i made two waistband via using both this fabric and the wool 

The looks

For this project, the idea is about free cutting and draping, and the technic is from Julian Roberts, but for the outcome of the project, the fabric must be a knit fabric.

inspiration board

Basically, i made a top V-neck pattern, and placed it on the fabric which i made into a big “pillow” shape, placed whatever i want, and connected each pieces from the armhole (as the diagram shows here)

process

After stage one which was cut out the negative space of the fabric and join each parts together.

This project is really about free cutting, so i did some draping to form the dress into a shape that i like, drawn holes on the fabric directly, then cut and sewn. 

And the last step is just finished the bottom part.

here are the looks of a model

I applied a pleats fabric on the bottom, just to give the dress a more fluid feeling.