Walking around Chinatown, I paid close attention to the architecture that I saw. The majority of it were towering buildings with fire escapes, very New York inspired. When I went into the shops, I saw a lot of dish ware with classic Chinese motifs of dragons, flowers, and twisted scrolls. I started to do some research about this type of dish ware and learned how long these have been around. They gained massive popularity during the Ming and Qing dynasties with the Imperial court. This type of dish ware has been present in Chinese history for thousands of years. I wanted to use this piece of history in my garment to illustrate how the architecture in Chinatown is a kind of a paradox to what it is suppose to represent.
