Silver Fashion, Apparel and Garment Design · 2024
The Opposite Multi-wear Fashion Collection
by Yishu Yan
- A' Design Award 2024 Silver Winner in Fashion, Apparel and Garment Design
- Awarded April 15, 2024
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 661,992
- Verification code A18E0A258A · Verify this award
About The Opposite Multi-wear Fashion Collection
The Opposite is a unisex knitwear collection designed to be worn in multiple ways. The collection is made with zero-cut and zero-waste methods, so no fabric is discarded. Digital knitting is used to form flexible three-dimensional structures and changeable garment constructions. Items from the two outfits can be interchanged and matched in different combinations, which allows each wearer to create a personal style. The all-size design fits most people of average build. The Opposite questions common ideas about menswear and womenswear.
Yishu Yan's The Opposite Multi-wear Fashion Collection, recognized with a Silver A' Design Award in Fashion, Apparel and Garment Design, presents a compelling meditation on duality, transformation, and sustainable design philosophy through garments engineered for multiple wearing configurations. This collection emerges from contemporary conversations surrounding versatile wardrobes and conscious consumption, positioning itself within a lineage of conceptual fashion design that interrogates the relationship between garment and wearer, between interior and exterior, between concealment and revelation. The technical achievement displayed in these pieces demonstrates remarkable sophistication in textile selection and construction methodology, with the quilted outerwear featuring a precise grid pattern that maintains structural integrity while permitting the dramatic draping and angular silhouettes that define the collection's visual identity. The dimensional collar treatment, with its layered ruffled construction, suggests influences from both historical European fashion—perhaps recalling Elizabethan ruffs or Victorian standing collars—and contemporary sculptural approaches to neckline architecture. Particularly noteworthy is the chromatic strategy employed throughout: by restricting the palette to indigo blues and ivory whites, the designer creates maximum visual impact while simultaneously demonstrating how a single garment's character transforms entirely through the simple act of reversal, the blue exterior suggesting depth, mystery, and contemporary edge while the ivory interior evokes softness, lightness, and classical refinement. The flowing skirts beneath the structured capes introduce textural counterpoint, their sheer pleated construction allowing glimpses of the figure while creating movement that contrasts with the geometric precision of the quilted surfaces above. The collection invites viewers to consider how our relationship with clothing might evolve when single garments offer multiple identities, asking us to reflect upon how transformation and adaptability might inform more mindful approaches to personal style and wardrobe curation.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- "The Opposite", a unisex fashion knitwear collection, aims to create a new concept of modern garments with multiple wearing methods. It features the zero-cut, zero-waste, highly adaptable, flexible wearability and longevity of the design through highlighting sustainable design thinking and digital design attributes. The stylish items in the two outfits can be easily interchanged and matched. Rather than focusing on providing a figurative silhouette or identity, the collection is more concerned with the inclusion of the product to the user. It intends to explore the process of confrontation and cooperation between contradictory elements through the development of flexible knitted structures and changeable garment constructions, questioning the common notions of men's and women's wear, and Eastern and Western clothing.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- This garment is an all-size design and will fit most people of average build.
- Tags
- Fashion Design, Knitwear, Multiple Wearing Methods, Unisex Design, Digital Knitting, Sustainable Design, Zero-waste, Zero-cut, Adaptative Design
- Production Technology
- This project was essentially completed in Hong Kong, China in 2019. Relevant research for design development has been published in Science Citation Index journals and obtained a China Utility Model Patent. The collection has been exhibited at the Asian Art Museum, in San Francisco, USA. Research related to the design project is being continued.
- Design Challenge
- The special three-dimensional knitted structure shows a unique surface texture effect and deformation ability, but it also creates a problem for the composition and relative stability of the garment structure. This is both a challenge and an opportunity. This flexible and versatile nature provides unlimited possibilities for the continuous development of this design.
- Project Duration
- This project was essentially completed in Hong Kong, China in 2019. Relevant research for design development has been published in Science Citation Index journals and obtained a China Utility Model Patent. The collection has been exhibited at the Asian Art Museum, in San Francisco, USA.
- Operation Flow
- The identity of both the designer and the user in this design is fluid. The designer plays as also a researcher and an engineer, involved in all aspects of design, development, and production. Meanwhile, the stylish items of the collection can be easily interchanged and re-matched, thus the user is encouraged to re-generate his/her style continuously. The essential concept determines the interaction of this design is always in a dynamic process of development and innovation.
- Research
- This design research is exploratory and practice-led in nature. The proposed design offers a new approach to innovative fashion that integrates surface design and construction design through a digital knitting process, which bridges the gap between modern knitting technology and fashion design. Textile structural research-led design allows clothing design to be no longer limited by the inherent framework, i.e., gender, identity, etc., but rather to look back at the matter of wearing itself, i.e. the interaction between clothing and the body. Both objective and subjective evaluation were involved. The results of a series of performance tests have evolved into serval formulas and a design database that provide quantifiable and predicate criteria for upcoming designs.
- Inspiration
- The inspiration comes from the visiting experience of the AUDIO ARCHITECTURE exhibition at 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo, Japan. There was one unique exhibit in the exhibition a special song. The song's lyrics present various contradictory words, such as structure and surface, chaos and order, sound and silence, to discuss the dynamic relationship between audio and architecture. It inspires me that, many items seem the opposite, such as artificial and natural, body and soul, or, knit and purl, however, are they opposites? Or are they an ultimate whole? As a Chinese idiom says "Seek common ground while reserving differences". This point of view may offer one possible approach for global humanity to face the contemporary dilemma of the post-epidemic era.
- Image Credits
- Image #1-5: Photographer: Joseph, Raysee Media/ Model: Sofia Korobova