Yixin (Ankice) Weng

To be a designer has been my dream since I was in primary school. I’m glad I didn’t give up and stuck to it until now. Making good-looking designs and clothes I like is my persistent motivation.

My graduation collection is called “cloud collector”, inspired by all kinds of clouds I have observed in my life. I am a person who likes to photograph everything that makes me feel happy in my life. Clouds are the object that I often observe and photograph in my daily life. The shape of each cloud is different and unique, and so is its colour. In different weather, different time periods and different seasons, the colours of clouds are different. The cloud presents a fluffy shape, which makes me want to touch it and pinch its soft body very much. So I thought that if I can combine the cloud with clothing through different manipulations, people can touch and also feel the cloud shape and the fluffy texture. This will be a very interesting design collection.

Through research and investigation, I found that the shapes of clouds named altocumulus and cumulus are very special. Altocumulus reminds me of multi-layer gathers skirt, and cumulus reminds me of Pom poms of different sizes.  I decided to use these two elements in my design. At the same time, I sew wool thread by hand and comb each wool with an animal hair comb, presenting the effect of three-dimensional clouds one by one in the design.

I refer to the silhouette of Dior’s “new look” and make a lot of use of the design of tight waist and A-line skirt. Because clouds can make rain and snow, I thought that I could refer to the traditional clothing of those people who live in winter all the year round. I thought of the Eskimos. Through investigating their traditional clothing, I found that they use fur as the fabric of the hoodie to keep warm, and use tassels as the edge decoration of clothing. I asked myself, what kind of fabric can show the tassel edge effect? From this, I thought of denim. I use denim to get the tassel edge effect, and then match it with a fur hoodie to make different fabric matching designs.

As for the choice of colours, I design by extracting the colours of clouds in different periods of time, as well as the colors used in different oil paintings about clouds.