Hint.(BA graduate collection) / June, 2024, London, UK

Fashion Design & Art Direction: Ling (Alex) Lai
Photograhy: Anqi Liu
Digital Mockup & Publishing: Pako Guo

The starting point of this project is the unexplained pain I often feel in my back but I’m not physically injured. This weird phenomenon makes me think of that is it something want to come out from under my skin? Is it my instinct? or some unfulfilled initial desire?

I take this feeling and connect it to a social issue of my community — the lack of sex education in East Asia. Because of the deficiency, individuals are ashamed to talk about sex and trying to hide their initial desire. I compare these hidden desires to how our inner energy works then visualized them with fabric. when energy blockages occur, they manifest as pain which is like the twist, the knots and the gathering that I make trough draping . Then I refer to the therapy to soothing the blockage which is called: ‘reiki’ , by constructing a tunnel that connects the inner and outer then the pain can be expelled. This way of creating a path makes me think of local Chinese healing methods called acupuncture and cupping, as they work by creating channels for internal overloaded energy to get out.

Remembering a phrase that is popular in the Chinese LGBTQ community, ‘I used to be gay, but I was cured by drinking Chinese medicine,’ . I play with the funny idea of using acupuncture to help with curing sexual inhibition in an ironic way. Throughout the whole collection, I compare my skin as a another piece of clothes which is the gray tailoring parts, from the first look to the last, step by step I take off my skin as a garment to show my inner desire. By changing different texture and using different shades of yellow, I show the different situation while letting the inner desires out which Garments evolve from constricting silhouette to pieces that seems to be unrestrained. I didn’t show the way of the therapy itself directly while different round elements on the garment such as buttons and studs represent the marks left after acupuncture and cupping, making it looks like a successful treatment.

Just like we understand that you can't change your sexual orientation by force as well as you can't really fix sexual inhibition with acupuncture and cupping just like the last look, it seems to be unrestrained but it still get caged similar to the first look. All the marks made by the therapy on the garment is a warn which aims to draw people’s attention to the importance of sex education.