Finding My Way Into Fashion

My path into fashion was not a traditional one.

I entered to fashion as an adult, studying design after changing fields. To be closer to my family, I chose an accelerated path through two overlapping programs and completed what was originally a two-year course of study in just over a year.

Along the way, I began to understand that I was less interested in fashion for its own sake than in the possibilities of a beautifully constructed garment — a clean silhouette, thoughtful structure, and details that reveal themselves up close.

I was drawn to eveningwear because it gave these elements room to come together.

My design education also taught me something that has stayed with me ever since: find your own visual language.

That question became the starting point for everything that followed.

Learning the Craft

After returning home, I eventually joined a small atelier that created stage gowns for students from local music academies and for professional singers.

I worked primarily in embellishment, and this was where I began learning the craft from the inside out.

Bead embroidery, hand-applied embellishment, floral techniques, decorative composition, materials, and the practical work of translating an idea onto a finished garment — I experienced them not simply as design exercises, but as real work that had to be completed, fitted, and worn.

The environment was very different from the aesthetic I naturally gravitated toward. The gowns were often rich in saturated reds, greens, purples and elaborate decoration.

But that contrast taught me something valuable.

It made me look more closely at what I could control.

Designing for the Stage

When the color and overall direction of a garment were already decided, I began asking a different question:

How can the garment truly come alive on stage?

A gown that looked richly decorated in a bright studio could appear surprisingly quiet under stage lighting and from a distance. I learned that embellishment was not simply about adding more — it was about placement, scale, rhythm, contrast, and how light would interact with the surface.

This was one of the most important lessons of my time in the atelier.

A stage garment has to be understood from more than one distance.

It has to work up close, where craftsmanship can be appreciated, and from the audience, where silhouette, movement and visual impact become essential.

Through repeated trial and error, I began to understand that stagewear has its own visual language.

Finding My Own Language

At the same time, I was beginning to understand that my own design language came from more than fashion alone.

I had studied Chinese painting when I was younger, and before studying fashion, I had also trained in jewelry design. Later, fashion design and hands-on embellishment became part of the same vocabulary.

I began to see a natural connection between them.

The composition of Chinese decorative arts, the precision of jewelry, the structure of a garment, and the way embellishment catches light could all exist within one design.

This was when I started creating pieces in which I could take the process all the way from drawing the concept, developing the embellishment, to realizing it by hand.

The gown shown here is one of those pieces — designed, drawn and embellished by me.

It was not simply about making a dress more ornate.

It was about finding a way for my own way of seeing to become part of the garment.

From a Starting Point to a Wider Stage

My experience also changed the way I thought about the market itself.

China has an extraordinary depth of garment manufacturing and craftsmanship. At the same time, living and studying abroad had given me a different understanding of how people outside China shop, dress and perform.

I began to see an opportunity at the intersection of the two.

Chinese stagewear was a natural place to begin, because it was where my background in Chinese visual arts and my experience in embellishment could offer something distinctive.

But it was never meant to be the boundary.

As I continued exploring performance wear, I became increasingly interested in the different needs of performers — how a garment moves with a musician, how a singer is seen from the audience, how a silhouette works while seated at an instrument, and how elegance and stage presence can coexist.

That became the foundation for what I am building today:

stagewear designed not simply to be beautiful, but to belong to the performance.