"Oh My God", the animated film for Wang Shuo's graduate collection features with what looks like a metal bell-shaped dress accompanied by an Oriental melody and by distant noises of bells ringing. The dress features a bustier made with fabric and rigid elements and a skirt that looks as if it were made with hundreds of overturned metal hearts. Could they be ex-votos? After all some of them are characterised by abstract cut-out motifs, while others seem to have a cross-shaped motif carved inside them. There's also a bright LED light shining somewhere inside the gown. Could this be the perfect dress for a romantically robotic Coppelia? Well, actually its designer had something else in mind.
The design has indeed got a name - Shun Feng Er - a reference to the Chinese sea and door god with the ability to hear all sorts of sounds carried upon the wind.
Wang Shuo's collection moves indeed from "The Creation of the Gods" a seminal Chinese mythological text published in the Ming Dynasty, each outfit has indeed got the name of one of the characters from the book - from Bi Gan and Jiu Tou to Kong Que, Lei Zhen Zi, Qian Li Yan and Yang Ren. The collection is also conceived as a tribute to the designer's own fascination with the richness of religious architectures that he developed while studying in Italy.
This combination of inspirations generated disharmoniously harmonious designs: some pieces seem to combine sacred vestments and tribal attires; an emerald lace cape that wouldn't look out of place on the stage of a opera house incorporates on the back a massive beak-shaped element, while the designer also played with illusions as not everything is what it seems and some of the metal components are actually 3D printed elements, hacked and repainted by Wang Shuo himself.
There has been a lot of talk recently about fashion and religion especially after the exhibition "Heavenly Bodies" opened at the Met Museum's Costume Institute, but in this case we have a young designer taking the discourse further, breaking up conventional references and creating his own vision of Chinese myths and Catholic architectures, a world in which the East and the West live together in peace.
Some of the garments actually make you think about the modus operandi of the costumes designers behind Pier Paolo Pasolini's films such as Medea or Oedipus Rex: unsure about the historical period they should have taken inspiration from since they were dealing with mythical characters and trying to avoid falling into stereotypes, they turned to research and fantasy, creating fabrics from scratch and making accessories and jewellery with whatever they found.
Wang Shuo did the same, perversely rejecting conventional fashion rules and suggesting a very personal interpretation of legends and religion: the designer's vision is the proof that you don't need to follow trends, especially when you're young, but you can find intriguing inspirations in your own history and in what surrounds you.
Can you please introduce yourself to our readers and tell us more about your background?
Wang Shuo: I was born in a small town, Baishan, in the northeast of China and, when I was 12 I moved to Zhoushan with my parents, a town located around 2,000 KM in the southeast. I graduated from Zhejiang Sci-Tech University with a major in fashion, art and design. On my junior year I had the chance to go to study at FIT in New York as an exchange student; then, after graduating from college, I came to Milan and took the MA in Fashion and Textile Design at NABA. Before my final thesis I did an Erasmus program at the London College of Fashion and followed some very interesting shoe making lessons during that semester.
Which were the best classes you had at NABA?
Wang Shuo: I found almost all the classes I took there important and useful. The ones in textile design taught me a lot about different types of fabrics and how to make and use them; the hat making lessons made me realise that accessories are also important in design, while the photography classes helped me learning how to showcase my work. The "From Foot to Head" classes had the deepest effect on me. They were the first ones I took at NABA and during them Professor Cinzia Ruggeri inspired us to fulfill our design idea with our individual experience and intuition. It was very different from what I learnt in college and the approach we were taught radically transformed my concept of design.
Who has been the greatest influence on your career choices and do you have a favourite fashion designer or artist?
Wang Shuo: My parents have so far given me emotional and practical support and this is important as I love design and I feel lucky to have chosen a career that is also my passion. Professor Cinzia Ruggeri also gave me a lot of advice and encouragement and that helped me preserving my faith in what I am doing. For what regards artists and designers, I like those ones who display distinguishing attitudes and approaches: among the designers I like the most there is the late Alexander McQueen because he had a great ability at controlling different kinds of materials; I also admire Frida Kahlo, a painter who deeply shocks me for her in-depth studies about her own self and the lively and strong way she portrayed herself in her works.
Which disciplines inform your work?
Wang Shuo: I guess I can't actually say for sure. For this collection I was inspired by old churches and character images from Chinese legends. I wanted to tell a story moving from these inspirations and I ended up creating it using all sorts of materials and technologies available to me at the time of making the collection.
Your collection is presented with a video – are you also into animation?
Wang Shuo: Yes, I am - if I have the opportunity, I try to use animation to show my works from different perspectives.
Can you introduce us to the main themes of your collection?
Wang Shuo: When I first started working on my collection I wanted to include in it a variety of elements, many of them inspired by the book "The Creation of the Gods" and by the Italian churches. I used metal, glass, wood and 3D materials together with fabrics and integrated lights to create a changeable environment. When you switch on the lights, the outfit looks different and it also looks different if you look at it from another perspective. I wanted to use this symbolism to highlight how people and things are more multifaceted than we think and we will see different sides of them if we look upon them from different perspectives. In a way this is the core theme of my collection.
Did you first develop a story in your mind for this collection?
Wang Shuo: Yes, as I said before I developed an idea about what I wanted to present and then started to think about how to make it come true. While I worked on my idea I visited churches and I noticed that there are many resemblances between gods in Chinese legend and gods from the European tradition. Then an idea came to me – it would be amazing to combine elements from Chinese novels and churches in Italy. I studied the characters in "The Creation of the Gods" and decided which ones I could have included in the collection, then tried to figure out how to construct all the elements both from the West and the East and combine them in a harmonious way.
There is an interesting dichotomy in your collection, on one side the technological elements (the sculptures with integrated lights for example...) and on the other the fashion aspect with clothes made with fabrics: what inspired these dichotomy?
Wang Shuo: Defintely my fascination with churches in Italy and with their architectural features such as sculptures, wood carvings, bricks and painted glass. I wanted to include those architectural features in my work. To fulfill this idea I decided to combine hard materials that can be easily shaped with fabrics. I have used metal ceramics and glass objects for example and employed 3D printed plastic materials as well.
Was this dichotomy between technology and craftsmanship replicated during the stages of the creation of the collection?
Wang Shuo: Yes, I developed one stage of the collection using 3D modeling software, but then I created the pieces by hand. Most of the 3D materials were made from plastic; I heated and shaped them, then painted them with paint coating mixed with metal powder and wood powder to created a different surface quality.
Which was the most difficult aspect of developing your collection?
Wang Shuo: I used a lot of 3D printed materials, but I had no knowledge of how to use a 3D printer which meant it took me quite a lot of time to learn everything from scratch and do the 3D models!
Is there a technique you'd like to experiment with in future?
Wang Shuo: I want to learn different techniques: I recently got a second-hand embroidery machine that can do different patterns with software and I'm now trying to learn a bit more about it and playing around with it.
What are your immediate future plans: would you like to stay in Milan or would you like to move somewhere else now that you've finished your studies at NABA?
Wang Shuo: I don't have any immediate plans yet, I think it is important to do things that I love to do and I will try my best to do them better. I'm going to stay in Milan and I hope to learn more from other designers before I present my new work.
Would you like to showcase your pieces in a museum or gallery one day?
Wang Shuo: It would be great if that would happen, but it's better to let nature do things at its own rhythm. For the time being, I think it is more important for me to learn more and get further experience before committing myself to such showcases.
All images and the video in this post courtesy and copyright Wang Shuo
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