Press Release
Foam of Desire Clothing Design by Kaiqi Zhang Receives the Bronze A' Design Award in Costume and Heritage Wear Design
Kaiqi Zhang recognized for costume and heritage wear design by the international grand jury of the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 15, 2026 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has confirmed the Bronze A' Design Award in the Costume and Heritage Wear Design category for Foam of Desire Clothing Design by Kaiqi Zhang. The result belongs to the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition and was decided through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who evaluated anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
The Bronze A' Design Award Explained
The Bronze A' Design Award is given to outstanding designs that showcase a high degree of creativity and practicality. It recognizes the dedication and skill of designers who produce work that stands out for its thoughtful development and innovative use of materials and technology. These designs are acknowledged for their professional execution and potential to influence industry standards positively. Winning this award highlights the designer's ability to blend form and function effectively, offering solutions that enhance people's lives and wellbeing.
Regarding Foam of Desire Clothing Design
Grounded in a critique of the desires and emptiness that define modern consumerism, this piece uses garment design to interrogate the alienation festering within material wealth. It reimagines seventeenth century aristocratic attire, shaping a moldable fabric into a voluptuous silhouette that mimics a body devoured by desires. A palette of turquoise blue, clashing with sweet pink and sickly yellowish green, creates a superficially alluring yet deeply disquieting effect. This tension invites viewers to contemplate the nature of desires.
About Kaiqi Zhang
Kaiqi Zhang is a costume designer and visual artist whose work spans theatre, film, and interdisciplinary media. Her designs explore the interaction between body and space, shaping emotion and rhythm through narrative detail. Centered on theatrical costume, her creations extend to character and conceptual design, forming a visual language between reality and fantasy. Her works possess strong psychological tension and sculptural presence, blending structure, texture, and story. Beyond costume, she explores installation and visual space, expanding the expressive potential of costume in contemporary performance.
Award Record
This recognition makes Kaiqi Zhang a winner of 1 A' Design Award.
About the A' Costume and Heritage Wear Design Award
The A' Costume Design Award is an international costume design competition recognizing outstanding costume creations by the world's most talented costume designers. The competition is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to stylists, fashion houses, costume designers and fashion designers from all countries. Entries typically include theatrical costumes, fantasy wear, cosplay gowns, historical clothing, kimonos and saris. Awarded costume designs are published at https://designers.org/design-category/costume
About A' Design Award & Competition
A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade organized annually since 2008. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The A' Design Award has a philanthropic mission to advance society through good design by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Entries are peer reviewed and anonymously evaluated by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. The A' Design Prize granted to eligible laureates includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, the upload of a work and the preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. Further information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://designers.org/178948
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/178948
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!178948
- Laureate Profile: https://designers.org/d/375264
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Foam of Desire Clothing Design
- Function
- Clothing Design
- Category
- Costume and Heritage Wear Design
- Discipline
- Communication Design
- Industry
- Fashion and Arts
- Colors
- Rosy Brown, Dark Gray, Gray, Silver and Teal
- Images
- 5
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Kaiqi Zhang
- Country
- United States of America
- Recognition
- Bronze A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2025 - 2026
- Design ID
- #178948
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- Inspired by Epicure Mammon from The Alchemist, this piece reimagines European aristocratic attire from the 17th century to question the concept of decadent luxury. Using a specially engineered moldable fabric, the garment swells into a bloated silhouette reminiscent of bubbles, evoking bodies consumed by desires. Vivid turquoise blue and pink create a visual allure that is both jarring and seductive, with a sugary quality that prompts viewers to reflect on overconsumption and inner emptiness.
- Inspiration
- This piece takes its cue from Epicure Mammon, an embodiment of insatiable desires in the play The Alchemist. It deconstructs the symbolic language of seventeenth century aristocratic attire to pose a question about beauty in excess. Each element becomes a visual narrative around the body, speaking of desires that swell, promises that prove false, and the inescapable reality of decay.
- Research
- This work critiques the consumerist era by framing its core maladies: swelling desires and inner voids. Using the structure of seventeenth century aristocratic attire, the piece presents bloated, bubble like forms that symbolize a body consumed by insatiable desires. Jarring color combinations then guide viewers from visual seduction to psychological disquiet, ultimately revealing the spiritual barrenness hidden behind a luxurious facade.
- Challenge
- The key challenge was to lead viewers from visual seduction to psychological unease, and the answer lay in color use. A rational turquoise blue base is invaded by lush pink accents that embody swelling desires, while traces of sickly yellowish green underneath hint at decay and exposure. The contrast between high saturation and low brightness, paired with matte and pearly finishes, creates a tension between a sweet appearance and hidden unease, turning initial allure into disquieting reflection.
- Realization and Technology
- A specially engineered moldable fabric, adhesive when wet, allows for intuitive hand sculpting of volumetric forms. By laminating foam into the fabric and injecting air, this approach creates irregular organic bubbles with a unique hybrid texture, which is both translucent and semi rigid. When illuminated, these forms look like a second skin, materializing the concept of internal collapse festering beneath a surface of opulence.
- Operation and Interaction
- This work redefines clothing from a mere covering for the body into an aggressive entity that devours it. The doublet, with its dramatically exaggerated chest and shoulders, achieves a swollen, voluptuous contour that makes inner desires visibly manifest in the flesh. The asymmetrically reshaped ruff collar, when illuminated, casts an encircling shadow, mirroring the confinement in a prison built from greed and vanity.
- Project Duration and Location
- The project commenced in October 2023 in London, United Kingdom. The initial toile was completed in December 2023, and the project concluded in March 2024 with the completion of the final garment.
- Specifications
- approximately 175 centimeters high, 140 centimeters wide and 80 centimeters deep
- Keywords
- Clothing Design, Materializing Desires, Material Experimentation, Visual Metaphor, Irregular Forms, Visual Tension
