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“Mystical, powerful and timeless.”
Blurring the boundaries between clothing and sculptures, RMIT fashion graduate Beibei Li juxtaposes soft draping with hard-edge structural elements to create movement on the body. Her final collection, titled Spiritual Project, was informed by her personal meditation practice and understanding of the Buddhist school of zen.
“My original intention of making this work was to heal my state of mind,” Beibei says. “The phrase ‘spirituality’ is associated with purity, clarity, peacefulness and transparency. To reflect this, the patterns I used are taken mainly from what I see and feel during my daily meditation practice.”
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As an official media partner of Paypal Melbourne Fashion Festival, Fashion Journal is excited to once again be supporting the National Graduate Showcase, celebrating Australia’s top-ranked emerging fashion design talent. The top 10 leading graduates from across the country will exhibit their collections in a boundary-pushing presentation, showcasing experimental design and innovation. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be profiling each designer through a series of interviews. Next up is Ada Fong.
Please introduce yourself to our readers.
My project blurs the boundary between clothing and sculptures. Through design, I’m exploring the structure of non-traditional clothing, [and] combining it with digital printing to enrich the mood of sculptural structure in garments. The unique print expression implies an immersive experience of self-awareness in the inner world.
Tell us about your collection.
The spiritual project is about interpreting my understanding of spirituality through the prints I draw. The phrase ‘spirituality’ is associated with purity, clarity, peacefulness and transparency. To reflect this, the patterns I use are taken mainly from what I see and feel during my daily meditation practice.
In these six sets of outfits, I combined my understanding of zen in Buddhism into the designs by simulating the traditional method of wrapping the robes around the body to present the unique texture of the draping. By doing experiments with knit jerseys, I found… the textures to embody the core concept of ‘purity’ in meditation.
As you can see, larger-sized wooden frames have been created on the upper body… these are a metaphor for the protective therapeutic rays [that work] in a continuous circular motion while I am meditating. They drive the audience to imagine a strange inner world.
When did you know you wanted to get into fashion and textile design?
When I was in primary school.
What were the major points of inspiration for your collection, and you more broadly as a designer?
I wanted to use green as a healing colour to comfort people’s hearts in this fickle world. I asked myself why… the healing process is connecting with my daily meditative practice. Also the more I made, the more I was interpreting a mood of being peaceful and controllable.
I would call myself an expresser of artistic meditation… the word ‘expresser’ is universal and free. It’s the same logic as the theme of Spiritual Project.
Who are your biggest inspirations as a designer?
I seem to have always had a strong desire to become a fashion designer… I would often draw clothing in my textbooks, and I clearly felt the joy. Every single line brought me healing, even though I was warned many times by my parents and teachers not to freely draw in Chinese and history textbooks.
How did your understanding of Buddhism inform this collection?
I am non-religious. But during my last honours year, I have been trying to find a sense of stillness as I have meditated many times. By chance, I received the fabric used in the current work, which has a strong draped texture and reminds me of the monks’ robes layered on top of each other. Suddenly, it dawned on me that the calmness I wanted was a feeling associated with Buddhist philosophy.
It is a feeling that was mystical, powerful and timeless. So, in my printing series, I hand-painted a lot of gradient circles, just to simulate the halo on the Buddha and also to illustrate my understanding of light in Buddhism.
Dream Australian collaborators?
Tilda Swinton or Nicole Kidman.
Some of Beibei’s responses have been edited for clarity. To view more of the designer’s work, head here.
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