In contrast, Vivian Lin, who works under the name Bibi, embraced the darkness, and horror, as a means of path to catharsis. “I want to humanize the unknown. I invite the audience to consider destruction as a form of creation,” is how she put it. Her voluminous designs, which looked like exoskeletons adorned with the organic shapes of internal organs, were made with materials dense (felted wool and toweling), sticky (latex, wax), and unexpected (kelp and mold).
Tracy Zhang’s dystopian collection brought together Bladerunner with a lived experience, Beijing’s 2013 “Airpocalypse.” Zhang was very young ant the time and woven into the mystery and gloom of the event for her was a sense of curiosity. “This collection revisits that sense of adventure, going back to retrace my childhood fantasy, and at the same time, it discovers the absolute brutal reality of a post-apocalyptic landscape,” she wrote. Using reclaimed materials such as foam and faux-fur, she crafted garments that were alternately survivalist and a bit dreamy, as in a look made from home textiles with what she describes as a rococo vibe.
The undulations in Olivia Rose Fournier’s work were inspired by the ocean, which also informed her palette. A dress with side tucks that resembled the overlapping marks of water of sand, or the ridges of a scallop shell, was notable.“Through my work, I give reassurance. Life, like the ocean, is full of changes, but there is hope that everything will be okay in the end,” she wrote.
Serenity was a quality that illuminated the extremely delicate work of Anna Winters, which grew out of familiar materials and familial relations. Her process was literally homespun: “Many of the textiles developed in this collection were created by hanging vintage textiles—family heirlooms—in the window, allowing light to pass through these pieces and onto garments or fabric where the cast pattern was then traced,” she explained. She captured these through handwork, much of it tone-on-tone, and extremely subtle, in keeping with her interest in “gentle, nondescript, even subconscious acts of memorialization.” For all the quietude of this work, Winters cuts a memorable pair of pants.
Like Winters, Jordan Wang also considered the “everyday,” but in the context of her own feelings of “identity crisis and cultural anxiety,” and in relation to contemporary Chinese art. “Mass-produced objects—cheap, abundant, and overlooked—resonated with me. To be one of many, yet marked as “the other,” felt like drifting as a plastic bag.” She transformed pain into beauty using takeaway plastic totes to make a floaty, ruffed dress full of romance and drama. There was also a nude mesh dress embellished with mosaic bath tiles, and another style made of wigs and adorned with shiny barrettes.