I have been fascinated by ideas surrounding the human body since I was young. I was very into anime/manga and cosplay as a teenager, and this led to my passion in investigating how we dress up to express our identity, later translating to the medium of fashion design.

I am quite open to getting inspired in different ways, either from conversations with friends, reading literature and theories, emotional responses from personal incidents or case studies of other art/design projects. These can then be further articulated into a concept to express through design or a problem to be solved by design.

I have always had an interest in speculating the core of design in general and its material concepts, so during my exploration in the fashion field, I began to question the contemporary entity of a garment or clothing. Whilst working in the Central Saint Martins fashion studio, I came to realise how much material waste is generated during a traditional fashion design project development, as garment toiles (mock-up models) are made repeatedly before the production process even begins.
The vast majority of textiles on the market are non-recyclable, which means we as young generation fashion graduates/students are also contributing to the pollution issues if we continue to do things the traditional way. When Central Saint Martins briefed us with a sustainable-focused project, I took the opportunity to spend time researching biomaterials and exploring case studies of existing material and technological innovations.

Personally, I do think more designers should join the movement to use design and research to discuss, develop and improve our current fashion system.

I like exploring the idea of contradictory duality and correlation between polarizing elements. By referencing nature and traditions for innovating new methodologies, I aim to reflect on how we can incorporate digital technologies to discuss our current and previous realities. Since the beginning of the project’s design research, I intentionally invited the idea of chaos and entropy from nature to collaborate in this project and to inform my design decisions.

3D modelling and rendering were used to accurately and efficiently simulate visual outcomes for this project, but also enabled a significant reduction of excess material, energy and labour waste. I first created the casting moulds through 3D modelling and fabricated these with 3D printing and laser cutting before going into the bio lab. Through adjusting subtle details on 3D rendering software, such as the cutting details and depths of casting moulds, I was able to manipulate the material textures and other qualities of the final physical biomaterial. So actually, the 3D rendering technique is a ‘catalyst’ that effectively helps me experiment on a large variety of embodiments and expressions of materiality.
Using 3D animation as a final presentation medium may seem paradoxical to a project that explores materiality, however, this use of digitisation means the final product is transformed and elevated from decomposed biodegradable textiles into an everlasting digital reality. Once the physical material vanishes, its soul is uploaded into a new, virtual life that is not only sustainable but also significantly more accessible.

I am seeking a solution to programme fashion as a human-made object to coexist with nature. With the aid of digital technology, I aim to bridge the two polarising elements together on the medium of garment, through simulating the idea of ‘growth’ and ‘biological entropy’ accurately with the physical garment.

Innovation often comes from cross-disciplinary collaborations, and I think great things can happen when science and art/fashion inform each other. Learning from a different discipline brings perspective, new questions and critical thinking, which can inform your own practice. Sometimes, an ambitious idea or raw concept requires a scientific method to realise.
I think multidisciplinary initiatives should definitely be encouraged more in the fashion industry to enable more people to access techniques, skills and knowledge that would otherwise be difficult to access. I believe that fashion technology can be a type of catalyst to manifest more amazing artistic projects.

The initial material exploration started over a year ago while I was still in my placement year at Central Saint Martins. Spending five months in a bio lab in Amsterdam, I experimented through creating a range of biomaterials. The final outcome of Decomposition of Materiality involved developing a biodegradable textile made with silk cocoon protein and algae extract. Silk cocoon protein – sericin – as a biowaste is commonly discarded in industrial wastewater from textile manufacturing.
Regarding the design process, 3D technologies were used throughout the process to fabricate the material and produce 3D models. Then, producing a casting mould with the digitally designed patterns before using this as a replication mould to cast biomaterial liquid on. After the biomaterial incubation period, the material solidified with the designed texture and I further applied the silk cocoon protein selectively to engineer how the garment creases and shrinks regionally responding to change of humidity/temperature.

The environmental settings are variable. For example, the bio-garment degrades much faster when soaked and can be easily reused after filtering out the non-toxic residue if desired. I did numerous trials with different environmental settings and decomposition time duration because the conditions vary on each geographic location and local season. When the season changes from humid summer to dry winter, the garment stiffens and appears to be more sculptural, and vice versa. During a curated live performance event or a showcase where the indoor conditions are controllable, the garment would expand, shrink, grow or decompose as intended. So, its change of states can be infinite.

The aesthetic comes from observations on the movements of organic shapes/forms. Since the beginning of the project’s design research, I intentionally invited the idea of biological entropy from nature to collaborate in this project and to inform my design decisions.

There is a lot to research on the aspect of nature and materials for sure, and considering the sustainability challenges we have now, I do think it would be nice if designers look in-depth in design circularity. Like many of us already do, we should question how our designs leave traces and impact our environments and society.

My past projects have been quite diverse in terms of mediums – they span across materials, digital/virtual realities, sculptures, fine art visuals and performance art.
Crossing of Shibuya was a media art project I completed for an exhibition in Tokyo in 2019. It was an experimentation on computer-generating infinite numbers of vivid avatars with virtual skin clothing. In this project, I developed a virtual platform where our post-humanised identities can be curated through wearable assets.

Hussein Chalayan. His poetic juxtaposition of the body, wearables and technologies influence the way I embody and approach contemporary fashion. Recently, I have also been very inspired by the art x science projects done by innovation labs around the world, such as the MIT Media Lab. They work beyond fashion, however, their cross-disciplinary design research and rigorous creative experiments made me realise the urgency to push forward this direction within my own current discipline.