2016 — Fashion collection
The Withering Flower
枯萎花
BA Fashion graduate collection at Central Saint Martins, built on the symbolism of the decaying flower in Oriental literature and fengshui.
The Withering Flower is inspired by the power of the flower image — its impact both visually and symbolically in an Oriental setting. From the flower's precise metaphor in the classical Chinese novel The Dream of the Red Chamber, which mirrors women living in a feudal society, to the way flowers are read in fengshui and in gifting etiquette.
The flower is both the embodiment of life and the inevitable nature of transience. I find the preserved flower a refined gesture of longevity, and the decayed petal the beginning of a new life — even though a decayed flower is read as a jinx in fengshui and as misfortune in Chinese literature.
The collection blends that stereotypical jinx with engineered beauty: hand-developed prints, layered translucency and constructed volume, reaching over the norms of what appeals and what repulses. The work was featured as a New Waves designer interview by 1 Granary in London and subsequently covered across European, Hong Kong and Chinese press.
