Golden A' Design Award Winner 2022
Mysterious Designer's X World Clothing operates as a profound meditation upon metamorphosis, employing the visual and symbolic language of transformation states found throughout natural world mythology and archetypal imagery. The chrysalis serves as the dominant symbolic framework, with the garment's structure suggesting the protective enclosure from which new forms emerge, invoking ancient associations between butterflies, moths, and the human soul's capacity for radical change and spiritual transcendence. The number four, represented in the sculptural protrusions, carries traditional associations with earthly stability and the four cardinal directions, grounding the ethereal design in terrestrial coordinates even as it suggests imminent flight. The horizontal banding across the bodice may reference the segmented bodies of insects or the growth rings of organic matter, encoding narratives of time, development, and accumulated experience within structural elements. White and ivory, the exclusive chromatic vocabulary, traditionally symbolize purity, innocence, new beginnings, and liminal states across numerous cultural traditions, reinforcing the sense of threshold existence the design embodies. The bilateral symmetry speaks to idealized natural forms and sacred geometries found in religious architecture and contemplative practices worldwide. The transparency of materials suggests vulnerability and revelation, the dissolving of barriers between interior self and exterior presentation, between protected core and exposed surface. The wing-like forms activate archetypal associations with angels, spirits, and transcendent beings across cultural traditions, positioning the wearer as a figure touched by sacred transformation. One might interpret the overall composition as celebrating human capacity for renewal, the courage required to shed former selves, and the beauty inherent in states of becoming rather than fixed being.
This work combines the palace lantern craft of China's intangible cultural heritage, using rosewood pear as the bone and silk gauze and glass as the coat. The combination of iron wire skeleton and silk gauze is both light and flexible, and layers of exterior insect skeleton are constructed on the human body. It's beautiful and fragile, flimsy and tough, and it shows the X-ray world of life.