Long Distance Family

Category: Apparel

My relationship with fashion has always been interesting because I grew up inspired by my parents’s style and outfit choices. One of my works for my portfolio I want to instroduce is a representation of my growth journey: my “long distance family”. Thus, based on my own experience, I really want to present a body of work that coherently talks about what "long distance family" means to me and how growing up in my household made my experience special. During the research and development process, I found some of my childhood clothing, which made me very emotional. Therefore, my illustrations consist of gradual changes of my life in seven different stages. For all the garments, I have chosen knit as my primary self-fabric.The reason for using knit is to show my soft and vulnerable side, I created the map grids patterns on AI, which is like wearing each city’s memories on a body. I choose to make 2 different kinds of machine knit: one has more 3D effect, the other one is more flat and the patterns look solid. I hope to create more dramatic differences to the textile in order to make it easier to identify the 7 stages: . When there were just mom and me. 2. My brother was born, there were four of us. 3. When I moved out of my hometown. 4. When I moved to a new high school. 5. When I moved to Philly, junior year. 6. When I moved to NYC for college. 7. My overall feelings of missing home. Also from a perspective of pattern making and product function, I used the method where one garment can be worn in two different ways. After a period of time, knit will have “memory” and grows with us on our skin. Going forward, I wish to experiment from the design of the clothing concept to the integration of functional fabrics, and be able to break through the traditional womenswear pattern making techniques (prototypes) to try something new.

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