Interview about Hybrid Beauty Womenswear Collection, winner of the A' Fashion, Apparel and Garment Design Award 2020
The design of Hybrid Beauty collection is to use the cuteness as the survival mechanism. Founded cute features are ribbons, ruffles, and flowers, and they are remade by traditional millinery and couture techniques. This recreates old couture techniques to modern hybrid, which is romantic, dark, but also eternal. The whole design process of Hybrid Beauty promotes sustainability to create timeless designs.
View detailed images, specifications, and award details on A' Design Award & Competition website.
View Design DetailsThe title of the collection is Hybrid Beauty. Starting from my personal story, when I had PTSD, the death moment, I tend to go back to childhood to deal with this, also on the other word “Being Cute”. I used cuteness to survive the death situation. The cute features which have been survived from the past, and traditionally used and inherited, until present, are a ribbon, ruffles, and flowers. By practicing the traditional millinery and couture techniques with using velvet and silk to mold flowers, and ribbon foldings, I reinterpreted the 17 to 18th century couture techniques from the past to hybrid and futuristic versions, which is romantic, dark, but also eternal.
PTSD and mental health is a very heavy topic for fashion. I chose PTSD as the main concept of my collections because I found a hope that fashion has a healing power. This journey started with my personal experience being a victim of the fashion industry, fashion overcame my health. I realized this is not just my experience, it is for everyone who is in the fashion industry, moreover, people living in this society. I challenged myself to solve mental health from the perspective of a fashion designer. Therefore, my brand, Moon Chang, has a big overall theme, called Hybrid Beauty, which uses “fashion as the treatment of mental health", using “vulnerability and cuteness as the protective mechanism to fight against deadly stressful conditions in modern society.
While researching the history of couture and flower making, I came up with a way to create my own petals using 100-year-old brass metal. I wanted to incorporate time into my collection with timeless techniques, using historical tools along with new techniques to express my design aesthetic and vision.Definitely, it was difficult to find historical pieces in the United States, so I collected the molds overseas. Also, I found M&S Schmalberg, a historic handmade flower company in NYC, and they helped me create large blooms for my Hybrid Beauty collection. Every joint effort is born into a new flower of the past and future.
My aesthetic focus on the dichotomy between beauty and ugliness is an invaluable narrative of my own visual and psychological vocabulary. I love to play with the tension and dualism between aesthetic and senses. Also, I always challenge myself to break the stereotypes of beauty, especially in the fashion industry. Many people who desire fashion have become slaves to consume fashion products, and also are willing to nip and tuck their bodies to meet fashion’s standard beauty ideals. I saw many victims who were hurt by fashion. Therefore, my brand “Moon Chang” does not have distinctive sizes, we only have size 0, which means “no size”. I found beauty by building exaggerated and oversized silhouettes and textures for the human body as the symbols for breaking the norms and expectations of a female body and beauty standards in our society that we slave to.
While using flower bouquet packaging as a draping and pattern-making technique, I came up with the idea of human packaging. I use flowers as a symbol of humanity and a metaphor for universal beauty, empowering humanity through clothing, aesthetics, functionality, and durability.
PTSD and aesthetic judgments are closely related as they are both triggered through memory, stimulation, and perception in the brain. I collected many experiences from myself and others, studied the medical and psychological treatment including neurobiology, and added aesthetic and functionality. My collection looks beautiful externally, but inside of it, there are dark and sad experiences, and many researches behind it, which will evoke people’s empathy and curiosity. My mission as a designer is not to just make beautiful garments but I aimed to exercise materiality and fabric choices to heal the trauma.
My dual aesthetic, beauty v.s. Ugliness, and in love with wastes, and ugliness, this evolves into the shapes, materiality, and fabrications to illustrate the dreamy but dark fairytale, which reflects our life. I wish to portray that every existence in this world has both softness and toughness, and this concept led me to develop the concept of Hybrid Couture, which is the mix of beautiful couture and functional street or sportswear. And stereotypically, couture has been received as uncomfortable garments, or just for special occasions, and I wanted to challenge that couture can be functional and durable. I realized what I love, which is fashion, can hurt nature and humans ultimately, and it’s not sustainable. In the beginning, I believed the easiest way to be sustainable was choosing the right materials with durability, longevity, and of course aesthetic.
Black and Pink! I have two different personas as a person. One external side is black, dark, massive and oversized(maximalism). But the other is an internal and hidden one, who loves pink, something small and cute(minimalism). The color “black” is considered as “dead”. However, I think it is a forever color, and also the pink which represents youth and love, but this also can be a death. Breaking the original meanings of each color and embedding the new perspective. My interpretation of Pink tries to bring the hidden shy one out, as the process of overcoming the trauma. My binary perception illustrates the contrast of the beauty and the beast, the light of purity and the darkness of shadow, dead and alive, and the fantasy and the reality. And I believe all the girls used to love pink when they were kids, and suddenly forget about their princess dream when they become adults, and I design the clothes that girls dreamed of when they were kids.
Yes, winning the A'Design Award was a truly honorable moment and a great opportunity to share my wearable couture with a global audience. I always want to share the positive message that anyone can overcome trauma and that everyone is beautiful both physically and mentally. Through this experience, I was able to share wearable couture and healing fashion with the public, which motivated me to take on more challenges and explore more.
The future of my fashion design is wearable couture and empowerment, which means “life” in terms of “sustainability”. It means “sustainable life” and “eternity.” I believe my traditionally invented designs have healing power to help people who suffer from mental health, and this is the power for the future fashion. I wish to create the whole experience of creativity and sustainability, and my brand makes people beautiful but empowering in social and ethical ways.
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