As an international member university of the Graduate Fashion Foundation, we’re thrilled to be able to share the work of a selection of Sichuan Fine Art Institute fashion design graduates, who have spent their degrees honing their skills in everything from costume design, fashion illustration, fabric design, accessories design and more.
One of the four most prestigious art academies in China, the Sichuan Fine Art Institute in Chongqing, Western China. for over 60 years, the institute has been fostering creative minds across many disciplines, including handcrafts, sculpting, oil painting, architecture, printmaking, art theory, and traditional Chinese painting.
The students have focused their attention to issues affecting the fashion industry now and in the future to explore how technology, climate change, mental health, bio-fabrication and cybersecurity will influence the clothing we wear and our relationship with fashion. Below, learn about 10 student’s collections.
Yang Hanlin
“ In the information age, with the development of science and technology, the cyberpunk style has gradually become famous. The light sense of neon lights in the dark brings people hope and imagination of the future technological life. Therefore, I adopted the typical cool colours of cyberpunk, such as blue and purple, and tried to depict the illusory and ethereal visual effects through some expression techniques of fault art, so as to express the life scenes after the development of science and technology to the extreme.
I removed the common neon signs from the street, deformed, twisted and misplaced them, and rearranged the clothes to blur the boundary between the real and the virtual. At the same time, the resin is covered on the poster paper to increase the lustre of the material and then inlaid with soft light strips to create the atmosphere of neon lights, and to emphasize the sense of space and layers of the clothing structure, so as to more vividly reflect the magical future.”
Deng Xin
“I expect to develop my graduate design work by exploring the possibility of future security check behaviours. That is: how to help security inspectors have a better physical and mental experience in special situations and how to protect others’ security and privacy and better identify insecure factors during the security check.
It is my working direction to send proper information to security inspectors in an appropriate manner through exterior images and to explore the virtual addition of sensing technology in clothing to make security inspection behaviours more user-friendly and less compulsive and aggressive in the security inspection process.”
Xie Zimeng
“In the future cyberpunk dark world, darkness makes people pay more attention to light and shadow, and gradually forms a unique aesthetic and demand for light and shadow. My design concept is mainly based on the vision of the future world. In the future, people will cause an irreversible impact on the earth due to various factors. In tens of thousands of assumptions, my design is aimed at the formation of "polar night" phenomenon due to environmental pollution in the future. At this time, people's demand for light must be the first.
In such a world, our demand for the role of clothing is not only to cover the body and keep warm; it is particularly important to let clothing itself become a light source to illuminate itself. In order to show their own personality, the requirements for clothing are not only light sources. The presentation of light and shadow on clothing has become a new aesthetic standard. In the way of expression, I chose the combination of 3D printing and hollow light to highlight the sense of future and technology.
First, after the design drawing is completed, a 3D model is built to print out, and then the light and shadow effect presented by the angle of a light source is repeatedly tested to draw the figure to be hollow out on the printed model, and then use the electric drill pen to hollow out and polish. Then, spray white matte paint and Silver Chrome paint to increase texture; finally, install colour LED light source and power controller to form colour slow flash effect.”
Zhou Qingxin
“Novel coronavirus has spread all over the world. People from all over the world are working together to overcome the difficulties and prevent the spread and injury of the virus. I will call the theme "viruses know no borders, and human destiny is linked". I’m very interested in the tension between viruses and people, and the changes in the way people behave because of viruses.
I take the airbag as the main part of the garment because the airbag represents the property of package, protection and isolation. The translucent material is chosen to bring people a clear and fuzzy sense of distance from the world around them. It is used to express the conscious and psychological isolation, loneliness, coldness and grotesque state that people have under such circumstances.”
Liang Mingxian
“My graduation project is a discussion on the impact of "Marine plastic pollution" on ecology and human life. This topic aims to explore the huge impact of plastic waste on the ecological environment and the application of plastic products in garment production. When people realize the impact of industrial production on the ecological environment and the importance of awakening the idea of peaceful coexistence with nature, clothing design will no longer simply pursue beauty, practicality and interests, but take humans to return and reflection as its main feature.
Plastic ocean, this documentary brought me shock and reflection, let I especially want to use their own professional knowledge to express my thinking and understanding of Marine pollution problems, I hope that through "setting" the creation of this series of themes to deepen their understanding of nature and human relations, thinking the coexistence relationship between production and environment, also hope to take this theme, let more is no more in-depth thinking and inspiration.”
Xiao Peihua
In an explanation of the relationship among human, architecture and natural environment through the comparison between the colour block stitching and line density, accordingly examined the role of the boundary in it.
Applying the surrealistic segmentation techniques with irregular geometric splicing processing, in which lead the colour blocks spread beyond the black edge, creating a transboundary visual experience, thereby reconsidering the significance generated by the boundary in it.
Gu Mingyue
For humans, consciousness is priceless, only consciousness is the proof that we exist here. Immortality does not mean restraining the decay of the body but preventing the death of the soul. Ten thousand years later, “GUMIY” realized the ultimate ideal of human beings. After the physical body reaches its limit, the consciousness and soul can be completely preserved, and the memory of our lifetime can be made into a chip and a hard disk, which can be put into the final destination of human beings, the high tower of consciousness.
In the future, people will no longer worried about energy, there will be no city and architecture in the world, only many towering “tower”, the consciousness of all human beings are stored in the tower, we are no longer trapped in time and physical body, we share our memories, people born began to desire death, the death of the physical body indicates your time is over, your mind will be hatched from the “egg”, GUMIY staff will take out your mind for you, taken to a “tower”, you and the people you love will be reunited in the “tower”. There is no end to our lives, we become omnipotent gods.
Tang Yifei
In the future of lack of materials, in what form will fashion exist? New chemical fibre fabrics that have advanced rapidly in petrochemical technology have completely changed the dressing habits of thousands of years, creating new functional fabrics that humans could not imagine a hundred years ago. Assuming that the future environment will become material-scarce and lose the expected productivity, what will the clothing look like in this period?
When the epidemic comes, people's needs for clothing will change significantly, but the part that cannot be changed will always adapt. In a difficult environment, with the concept of recycling as the centre, combining functional clothing accessories and clothing restructuring-remarkable (re-manufacturable) for the design and production of future clothing
Xue Guangtong
“In the design of “Me and Gluttony” using the three-dimensional and tactile ultra-light clay concoct the intentional and flowing state of gluttony, creating a sense of sick and mental erosion. They have their own tissues with different shapes to invade the body of gluttons. I hope to draw some attention to this small crowd by virtualizing the abstract concept through what I have learned in fashion design.”
Wang Chunli
You can learn more about Sichuan Fine Art Institute here.