(October 5
2019, Taipei) - As keenly awaited by
fashion aficionados, Taipei Fashion Week SS20 as Taiwan’s biggest fashion event kicks off today in the Songshan Cultural
and Creative Park. The event is set to run for 5 consecutive days featuring 16
brands that will give their alternative take on NOWism. To kick-start the show
on Day 1 are oqLiq, DOUCHANGLEE, INF, if&n. The four brands will grace the
stage along with local singers and actresses: Nana Lee, Dewi Chien and Sandee
Chan.
Contrasting elements and concepts are applied to spark oppositional and
harmonious dialogues in fashion design and accidentally lead to an exclusive
trending style. oqLiq focuses on setting an unprecedented fashion of outdoor
clothing by engaging in high-tech materials and refined tailoring techniques
for a brand that’s made in Taiwan. This time around, oqLiq takes inspiration from
Eastern thoughts and add on Buddhist concept of the universe, Taichi in Daoism,
oriental text and oriental clothing, plus a touch of Taiwan flair that is
blended into fabrics and patterns then turned into fashion.
Designer Chi Hong and Chia Hao
Lin use 3 pieces of old cloth with different color scales and arrange them
into irregular Octagon-shaped patch work with woven frames being the highlight.
In terms of design, the Chinese characters for Yi (With), Chuan (River), Jiu
(Nine), Yong (Use), Shang (Up), Xia (Down), Yu (Rain) are featured in the
cutting of the garments to serve as a storage structure. Zips are curled into
curves of the Ying and Yang arcs that also double as storage space. The images
on the garment are derived from the collision sparked out of doodling and
classic painting as two binary oppositions.
Known for a mild yet assertive display of contemporary humanity and
ideologies, the designer Stephane Dou and Changlee Yugin present their
spring/summer collection, DOUCHANGLEE 2020, featuring “Between” as the theme
and focusing on the convergence of the classic and the street fashion, where
different groups of people, different generations and different cultures can
all co-exist, stay fluid and mingle into the most authentic yet unique
contemporary urban landscape.
Practical items are re-worked by changing their proportion and pattern
and given renewed interpretation by using contrasting fabrics. Details like
sports functionality and malleability are blended into classic items using
coarse and masculine industrial-style slanted-patterned cotton for the base in
tandem with embroidered lace. Light, thin, translucent chiffons and high-tech
functional fabrics work together in an echo to the brand’s unrestrained design
philosophy.
Founded by Yi Fen Tsai, the emerging design brand, if&n extends the concept of steadfast
gentleness to fashion design, while exuding a certain feminine elegance through
interweaving and integration. Tsai specializes in working with natural
elements. For the design concept in this collection, she takes the lines of
lily flowers to construct a range of spring/summer garments with actual flower
shapes on the pattern plus the folded lines of folded paper lilies. Tsai’s
works take reference from all shapes and growth stages of lilies, including the
budding period or the blooming stage where the petals spread outward or the
curled-up petals during the withering stage where the flower’s life cycle is
coming to an end. Such traces of life are featured on the garment e.g. on the
collar, waist areas, skirts, folds in chest areas. Tsai goes for earth-bound natured-themed
colors as found in the breezes in the valley, and hints of shadow under the
tree. Given the gentle cool color scheme, the blooming lilies in the valley in Tsai’s
fashion collection come alive with more layers.
Carrying a persona of a mystic loner traversing in the darkness, Designer
Wei Kuo is to storm the stage with his consistently eccentric brand style and debut
in the Taipei Fashion Show his 2020 spring/summer collection. In his works, Kuo
integrates his experience of growing up into his brand personality. Having
lived with the obsessive-compulsive personality disorder as a boy, he adheres
to the design principle that “Design is rooted in compulsion, paranoia and
doubt,” and will bring to the season his collection titled, “Root Seeking”,
inspired by Juan Miró’s painting above his childhood bed: People and Dog in
Front of the Sun. With the One Line Drawing fashion technique as termed in
modern art, Kuo blends his childhood into the design where muscles and
structures of the human body unfold on the so-called fashion canvas by using yarns,
electric embroidery and banners. Along with the shape-shifting interaction with
clothing patterns, Kuo conveys a sensation that he previously experienced in Miró’s
painting.