![]() His courage to show what was previously considered to be ugly and hidden inspired me to take risks with my own designs.ĭingyun Zhang: As you might expect, most students were focused on making clothes that were considered tasteful by high fashion or past couture traditions. Tinker Hatfield, a footwear designer at Nike, was an early inspiration for me he was inspired to design the Air Max 1 with the air bubble after visiting the Pompidou Centre. My contemporary interest in fashion was mainly derived from basketball and hip-hop culture, specifically Allen Iverson and how he dressed and influenced the image and style of basketballers in his era. All that showed me what fashion textiles could become. In terms of textiles, I was drawn to silk embroidery that used Chinese silk threads for designs that were vivid and lifelike, intricate and complicated, and dreamlike screen printing that sparked my interest when I was young. This sparked my interest in form and sculpture, as did the Terracotta Army sculptures that are so important to Chinese history and culture. When I was young, I used to visit vintage markets in Beijing with my cousins where I was exposed to unique and intricate Chinese antiques and accessories, such as coral bracelets and Qing dynasty porcelain vases. During a recent whirlwind trip from Beijing to Europe, Zhang spoke with curator and Serpentine Galleries artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist about turning high art into wearable fashion, creating for the metaverse, and designing puffer jackets for all seasons.ĭingyun Zhang: I didn’t really have any introduction to European fashion designers at that time, but I did have my own culture and understanding of fashion thanks to historic Chinese clothing such as the cheongsam dress. It is a creative liberty he continues by subverting conventional design rules in his clothing, and using next-generation bio-materials and futuristic silhouettes to show how creativity can be reimagined to help us better navigate the world. Zhang’s trajectory towards early success can be traced back to his childhood creative experiments in China and his time at a fine-art college in Somerset, UK, where he says, he learned that making art made him both happy and free. They also caught the eye of Moncler maestro Remo Ruffini, who chose Zhang to create a collection for Spring/Summer 2022. His colossal puffers and oversized track pants are coveted among the fashion elite, worn by the likes of Gigi Hadid and Kim Kardashian, turning up in Vogue, and going viral on Instagram. It was an instinctive choice that was quick to pay off: Zhang went on to work on the hugely popular Yeezy 700 Wave Runner series, among other commercial successes.Ī free-thinking visionary with a radical approach to practical design, Zhang has established himself as one of fashion’s fastest-rising designers in the two years since he graduated with his MA from Central Saint Martins. West was looking for ‘incredible, highly sensitive people’ to join Yeezy’s design team Zhang, then still only a student in London, was hired the same day. In 2016, Kanye West flew Dingyun Zhang to his HQ in Calabasas, California, for a meeting.
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