Before focusing on 2D and 3D art, I was more into stage art like playing the piano and dancing ballet. I was deeply influenced by classical music and aesthetics, Tchaikovsky, 'Little Women', 'Little Princess', you name it. Later on, during my teenage era, I explored Japanese street fashion and historical gowns and it was the beginning of everything. I learned to draw anime figures and then moved on to draw fashion illustrations when I got enough skills. Fashion design is one of my dreams in my childhood but in my early teen era, I considered that an unrealistic wish. Now I am really grateful for all the supports that make my dream come true.
“Alice’s Brain” was born in 2012, a project, designer, and multi-media artist. From the deep within, she wishes to keep imaginative and adventurous like Alice in ‘Alice's Adventure in Wonderland'. It is the persona I turn into when I am creating things.
Conceptual pieces and garments, or pure historical remakes that consume much time with handy crafts to satisfy my inner maximalist ego. During the process of making it physically, I can think of other possibilities and forms to pursue the concept I would like to express to the world so it will become a series with a complete view.
Runway shows by Iris Van Herpen, Simone Rocha, Comme des Garcons and Maison Margiela. The structure and fabric manipulation are always amazing. Every time after watching their shows, I want to create.
Combining elements that seem 'oxymorons' is my design trait. For fabric, it is heaviness and softness, modernity and vintage, structure and fragility. Cotton sateen and lace are the most used material in my works. Especially lace, every time I touch it I would have the feeling of 'home'.
After seeing an inspiring art exhibition, after watching slow-paced poetic movies from the last century, after reading abstract poems and literature, or when my brain is relaxing.
No matter which form, physical or not, designers could refresh people's minds and let people think about the future, which is the practical aspect of design, or designers could also resonate with people's emotions or experiences. The most important point is 'communication'.
History of art, political events, literature, music, mood, photography, poems, and historical fashion. Social media helps a lot with discovering the beauties that are far away from my background I always find my peace in the embrace of 'exotic' things. With daily research, I have an enormous and non-stopping resource in my brain. My personal experience is a feed of my inspiration too. After digesting them by writing it down in journals, the experience would transfer visual language. But keeping the curiosity about the world is the most important one.
Combing the chaos and strictness, asymmetry and peace, purity and decay, history and modernity, romanticism and functionality, imagination and reality.
Currently, I am trying to balance my creating and living. I start my day by checking the social media accounts that post artists and fashion news, then I go to work. Keep having random flashbacks of movies, quotes from books, music pieces or a dream I had in the morning unconsciously when I am on my train is the way to extract the inspiration that I need to bore it to the real world, and it is like a kind of catharsis. After I go back home, I spend a few hours collecting inspiration and thinking about the development of the project I want to work on. So I am living two lives on the same day, it is my approach to save my imagination and creativity, to make it as a habit.
Very long. I am a perfectionist, so it takes a longer period than others to think over and over, then I finally decide which idea I would finally choose, and making it out is also consuming. For example, I made a ballet tutu last year, and it takes one month of inconstant beading, so counting the time is not something I focus on. I just want everything to take a slow pace but I am really satisfied with.
Intern at Vera Wang taught me so much with real-hand experiences such as hand sewing. These are the skills that are not taught in school. Working with experts of the field during the first internship will be remembered forever in my life.
I graduated from Pratt Institute in 2020 with a fashion design background. During my student era, working as an assistant at Vera Wang and Anna Sui shaped my path to combine couture techniques into her apparel works. Besides fashion, I also took many fine art classes like Artist's Books, silkscreen, and Illustrations. These courses helped me a lot with developing textiles and other opportunities as a designer to present my works. And I am currently working as a freelance embroiderer for a luxurious gift-shop company and that is a chance to apply my self-taught skills to real industries, which makes me satisfied and grateful.
Before focusing on 2D and 3D art, I was more into stage art like playing the piano and dancing ballet. I was deeply influenced by classical music and aesthetics, Tchaikovsky, 'Little Women', 'Little Princess', you name it. Later on, during my teenage era, I explored Japanese street fashion and historical gowns and it was the beginning of everything. I learned to draw anime figures and then moved on to draw fashion illustrations when I got enough skills. Fashion design is one of my dreams in my childhood, but in my early teen era, I considered that an unrealistic wish. After I got accepted by Pratt Institute in 2016, I finally realized my childhood dream is come true.
Everything beautiful. Keeping it in my style is my top priority. No matter which form, Ready-to-wear pieces, historical remakes, or more-conceptual garments and accessories, but most of the styles are inspired by historical fashion and movies. I am an old-school person, so 90% of my work relies on hand tasks, and it also influences my fabric choices too. I collect vintage trims and my favorite fabrics are cotton sateen and lace, every time I use them, it gives me a feeling of 'home'. But most of all, concepts are the starting points of everything. I enjoy mass researching on every point I brainstormed of, and move forward from that.
Peace or euphoria. Most of the time is bittersweet. The beginning is always exciting, then I dive into difficulties with selecting ideas, and the development is relatively impatient for me, and after the struggles, I try to let the result comes with 100% satisfaction.
Usually the collection of books about my favorite artists and designers inspired me a lot, and literature and poems of 20th-century modernism, Virginia Woolf, Jean Cocteau, Paul Celan, and books that stimulate my brain with vivid visions, and books about art history. About fashion designers, Runway shows by Comme des Garcons and Maison Margiela. The structure and fabric manipulation are always amazing. Every time after watching their shows, I want to create. And my passion for historical and slow fashion, keeps me creating conceptual pieces and garments that consume much time with handy crafts.
In the future, I want to focus more on making wearable art pieces, by using the techniques of making installations so that I could try more heavy materials. I am still on the way to discovering possibilities, whether it is opening a studio for making ballet costumes or taking commissions to make performance costumes in general, but for sure I am going to do more historical reconstruction to explore more in historical fashion.
Art and design are like labor. To keep it as a habit, do some little practice like writings and doodling in journals, and research art every day to keep me in the atmosphere of creating art and absorbing things. And When you feel something is not right, stop immediately and think over it before you continue.
To learn how to promote yourselves, but before that, you need to have enough work and build a portfolio. Moreover, you need to understand who is your target customer and what kind of role you are in the industry, such as your strengths and weaknesses. It is not necessary to be good at anything, one or two strengths and developing them to full scale is more important.
I look at the trend but set up a boundary that I do not want to take too much influence from it. You could say that designing a collection based on the current trend is a strategy though, but in my opinion the most important thing fo r a designer is to keep his/her style under the wave of fashion.
Put it there and look at it one or two days after. If there is anything I need to fix, then continue to make it till I am satisfied with it; if everything looks fine, then it is enough, I can stop here. I often dig up older projects and think of alternative way to interpret them. Usually, I have multiple projects going on in my head, and sometimes ideas from other projects could inspire me too.
Personally, I prefer designers who create the work with deep research behind it. Alexander McQueen and Rei Kawakubo are two examples. As for McQueen the rich historical information behind every collection and the idea of presenting it through performance, every time I watched the video of his past shows it still haunts my mind, I just can not get it off my mind. For Kawakubo, she breaks the boundary that most of her runway pieces do not look like an 'ordinary' garment, her interpretation of every technique that we are used to seeing is like an earthquake to the audiences. I respect every designer who brings the strong visual impact but also balances it with beauty.
I would say I am a world citizen, in a conceptual way. If I am not a designer, I might dive into comparative literature or social science like anthropology. Literature is one of my major inspiration resources, and it is always my hobby to write, while I am keen on researching histories and cultures of every corner of the world. My internet background influences me to build up my aesthetic system but living in a foreign country definitely broadened my views about different topics that I did not think about before, and it gradually influences me on many aspects.
Before focusing on 2D and 3D art, I was more into stage art like playing the piano and dancing ballet. I was deeply influenced by classical music and aesthetics, Tchaikovsky, 'Little Women', 'Little Princess', you name it. Later on, during my teenage era, I explored Japanese street fashion and historical gowns and it was the beginning of everything. I learned to draw anime figures and then moved on to draw fashion illustrations when I got enough skills. Fashion design is one of my dreams in my childhood but in my early teen era, I considered that an unrealistic wish. After I got accepted by Pratt Institute in 2016, I finally realized my childhood dream is come true.
The urge to present my aesthetical world to reality and the visions looping in my brain. I need to find a way to express it or it would be an unborn child stuck in my mind.
Everything beautiful. Ready-to-wear pieces, historical remakes, or more-conceptual garments and accessories, but most of the styles are inspired by historical fashion and movies. In the future, I want to focus more on making wearable art pieces, by using the techniques of making installations so that I could try more heavy materials.
Like some designs with innovative technology, if the goal of the design is to change the world and bring people happiness and better living condition, then it would be something I am interested in investing in the future.
Construct historical gowns of every era from ancient times till the 1950s with hand-sewn embellishments, accessories, underwear, and shoes, sadly I do not have time for all of them.
Personally, I prefer designers who create the work with deep research behind it. Alexander McQueen and Rei Kawakubo are two examples. As for McQueen the rich historical information behind every collection and the idea of presenting it through performance, every time I watched the video of his past shows it still haunts my mind, I just can not get it off my mind. For Kawakubo, she breaks the boundary that most of her runway pieces do not look like an 'ordinary' garment, her interpretation of every technique that we are used to seeing is like an earthquake to the audiences. I respect every designer who brings the strong visual impact but also balances it with beauty.
I might dive into comparative literature or social science like anthropology. Literature is one of my major inspiration resources, and it is always my hobby to write, while I am keen on researching histories and cultures of every corner of the world.
Design needs to find out some real issues and solves them. It is more to think of the 'aim', unlike art has more freedom without concerning too much about the customers. Except for these points, for me, design is an alternative way of expressing myself and my outlook and exploring the possibilities of originality.
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