The Withering Flower Printed Textile by Angela Tsai Jung Chiang is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2020 Silver A' Design Award in Textile, Fabric, Textures, Patterns and Cloth Design Competition Category.
SilverTextile· 2020
The Withering Flower Printed Textile
Client: Angela Chiang
Silver A' Design Award Winner in Textile Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #95294The Design
About The Withering Flower Printed Textile
The Withering Flower is a celebration of the power of the flower image. The flower is a popular subject written as personification in Chinese literature. In contrast to the blooming flower’s popularity, images of the decaying flower are often associated with jinx and taboos. The collection looks at what shapes a community’s perception on what is sublime and abject. Designed in 100cm to 200cm length of tulle dresses, silkscreen printing on translucent mesh fabrics, the textile technique allows the prints to stay opaque and stretchy on mesh, creating an appearance of prints afloat in the air.
The Recognition
About the Silver A' Design Award
The Withering Flower Printed Textile is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. The Withering Flower Printed Textile is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. The Withering Flower Printed Textile is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Where to Get It
Custom Textile and Pattern Design Services
We create innovative textile designs and patterns inspired by Oriental heritage. Our studio specializes in custom screen printing, fashion design, and cultural pattern development for theatre, hospitality, and corporate clients. Award-winning expertise meets traditional artistry.
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Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
The inspiration of The Withering Flower collection initially came from studying one of the Chinese' four great literature classics, "The Dream of the Red Chamber" by Cao Xueqin in the 18th century.
Throughout the story, images of flowers are spontaneously written as personification and foreshadowing as each character progressed over the storyline.
One of the poems that appeared in the story, "The song of the Flower Burial," as sung by the female protagonist, is a metaphor to the character's silent struggles in a feudal and aristocratic society.
The image of a flower's decay and burial symbolizes the inevitable death of all beautiful things, and the poem has since become my core inspiration to further study the flower image and its significance in Chinese culture.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
There are two core focuses in this collection: the conceptual research on the flower's image correlates with cultural identity and the technical execution on developing the textile technique.
For the conceptual aspect, I hope to discover the flower image beyond its traditional association with prettiness and affinity by examing the withered flower's symbolism, and the reason of why the decay is often perceived as misfortune in Chinese literature and culture.
For the technical aspect, I aimed to develop a specific silkscreen printing technique, that would make prints stay securely opaque on mesh and net fabrics while retaining the fabric's elasticity.
What are your future plans for this award winning design?
I plan to continue further study on the flower's significance in Chinese literature and create a visual library of the flower images' meanings and unique application throughout historical and contemporary cultural settings.
Alongside the continuous conceptual research, I also plan on working larger scale art pieces and installations with the textile applique for a future solo exhibition.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- The Withering Flower collection developed a series of silk screen printed fabrics and dresses. Each dress is length 2 meters long of sheer nets, composed of flower motifs with specific meaning according to its symbolism in Chinese literature. The textile printing technique enabled the binders to stay opaque, flexible, and waterproof on stretchy yet see-through nets, creating an illusion of prints floating in the air as well as tattoos on the skin when the dress is worn against the body.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Long dress's dimension: W 450mm x L 2000mm
Short dress's dimension: W 450mm x L1300mm - Tags
- Textile, Fashion, Fabric, Flower, Screen Printing, Innovative Textile, Central Saint Martins,
- Production Technology
- Silk screen printing on stretchy and see-through nets. By specific mixture of textile binder ratios to achieve the stickiness and opaqueness that the prints would secure onto the fabric surface. After silk screen printing, the fabrics are sent into baking and steaming for colour vibrancy as well as further locking the binders onto the fabrics.
- Design Challenge
- The research challenge appeared when I started reading Chinese literature classics, yet to organize the literary references in order to strengthen the point in the withering flower as an abject. Yet we know the decaying things meant bad luck in fengshui, but why?
The misfortune and dead are an avoided subject which I was taught since childhood. But what is shaping my instinctive judgement that withering matters repel us? Is it the knowledge passed down from my parents, or their parents, or the ancestors before them? Since when and how are our immediate responses to certain subjects are formed? Is the common sense formed in generation of cultures, through written records, spoken languages, families' upbringings that the idea of death equals taboo.
The design and execution challenge is the most struggling during the making of the textiles. Getting the right ratio for the print binder has failed several times, the paste was either too light to stay on top of the fabrics, or too heavy that the fabrics became sticky and unwearable. After many efforts on print binder ratio testing, steaming temperature experiments, baking process, and checking washability, finally came out an adequate measure that securely locked the opaque print on see-through net fabrics, and at the same time retained the glossy appearance, flexibility, waterproof qualities. - Research
- The research for The Withering Flower collection began with studying the Chinese Literature classic, The Dream of the Red Chamber, a novel by Cao Xueqin, originally published in 1791 in China, later adapted and translated to English in 1987.
My research on the flower image, especially the symbolic decaying flower image in Oriental settings further developed from studying the female protagonist's epiphany, whereas the character sings, The Song of the Flower Burial, during chapter 27 in The Dream of the Red Chamber.
The fallen and decayed petals beautifully yet melancholically symbolized the female protagonist’s struggle and sorrow in an oppressed feudal aristocrat society.
As the flower is a common subject for personification in Chinese literature and poetry, the meaning each flower embodies, or given by the writer and poet, is derived from its cultural and historic values.
By first examining flower representation in Chinese cultural settings through literature works, I learnt about the principles of flower symbolism is to primarily promote good luck and well-being. And yet, the heritage-rich knowledge in measuring good fortune resulted in the study of fengshui, and it still retains its significant influence over Asian countries. There is a myth in Chinese tradition that people subconsciously desire to surround their presence with things that resemble fortune in literature meanings. Therefore the subject of a decaying flower is perceived as misfortune and taboo, in contrary to the blooming flower's meaning in longevity and prosperity.
Another example, in Chinese culture the white chrysanthemum is the flower for funeral, and would be considered as a jinx if given on a normal occasion. The number 4 has the same pronunciation as death, and is avoided at hotel and apartment's unit number, even hospital would exclude the fourth floor at flooring plan, yet skipping from third floor directly to fifth floor at building indicator maps. The number 4 is as well a bad-luck number at giving out gifts, flowers, or the amount of red envelope money at Chinese new year.
The dead flower on the body leads to taboos about mortality and loss, as even the slightest sight of a vase of decaying flower is seen as an abject, and to be avoided in Chinese culture and custom. The dilemma I experienced around the cultural responses over the withering flower inspired me to analyze the traditions and paradigms that are shaping our aesthetics. - Inspiration
- The Withering Flower collection is inspired by the power of the flower image, its impact both visually and symbolically in Oriental setting.
From the flower’s precise metaphor in classical Chinese literature, The Dream of the Red Chamber, which simultaneously reflects the women living in a feudal society in the stories; to the extend of how the flowers are interpreted in fengshui as well as gifting etiquette, I was vividly drawn to the Oriental world of defining the flower visuals. - Project Duration
- The project started in January 2016 in London UK, and finished in April 2016. It was exhibited at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design as my graduation collection show for BA Degree in Fashion Design.
- Operation Flow
- The collection's hand printed textiles are stretchy, waterproof, and remained opaque on sheer net fabrics, creating an illusion of glossy stickers floating in the air. Unlike digital sublimation printing on sheer fabrics whereas the patterns are blended into the material yet making them semi-see through, this textile collection developed a screen printing technique to keep the opaqueness and vibrancy of the prints staying securely on top of the fabric surface.
- Patents
- Copyrights belong to Angela Chiang, 2020.
- Image Credits
- Image #1: Photographer Yi Tuo/ Lookbook Stylist Zipeng Li, The Withering Flower, 2016.
Image #2: Photographer Yi Tuo/ Lookbook Stylist Zipeng Li, The Withering Flower, 2016.
Image #3: Photographer Yi Tuo/ Lookbook Stylist Zipeng Li, The Withering Flower, 2016.
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