portfolio / selected works fashion design sustainable kidswear creative projects
Hsieh, Chia Yu
Born in Taiwan, a fashion designer and creator with an interest in sustainability. Chia-Yu focuses on sustainable fashion design strategies and the study of the life cycle impacts of silk. She draws her inspiration from artworks, landscapes, pictures, stories, and people. Her works present the characteristics of the material itself and enable a dialogue between wearers and designs. web / www.hsieh-chiayu.com
Hsieh, Chia Yu
PAPER DRAPING
Conceptual draping with paper
The hardness of paper makes it easy to shape three-dimensional forms on mannequins, in this project, instead of using the greige fabric, I perform draping with paper for the prototype. After deciding the cutting lines, I structure the corseted dress with numerous geometrical cutting pieces. On the one hand, to express the lightness of the dress, I choose to use two thin layers, the upper is translucent organza and the lower is the printed chiffon. On the other hand, in the detail, by reforming the waists sides to blur the boundary between clothes and body, presenting the distance among visible and invisible.
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KITCHEN GARDEN
A up-cycling project collaborated with Spoonflower
An up-cycling project with Spoonflower at Esmod
Berlin in 2017. Spoonflower is a digital textile printing company, focusing on natural and synthetic fibers. The company envisions the empowerment of the individual to create on-demand and custom-designed textiles. The designer attempted to utilize the pre-consumer waste fabrics to create a loose cocoon shirt and a multifunctional clutch. The hand-prints are made with fresh food and fruit, which enable bring products into bright and playful moods.
PETIT BONHOMME
Zero waste design thinking and co-creation with kids
On average, 15 percent of fabric is wasted at the cutting stage during garment production, which presents the first part of the textile waste problem is pre-consumer textile waste. Zero waste pattern design is a sustainable design approach to minimize the pre-consumer waste. It means that while designing garments, designers need to grasp the textile dimensions in order to arrange the pattern pieces, and likewise, it can work the pattern by draping.
This zero waste capsule collection, Petit Bonhomme is designed for kids from 3 to 6 years old, who full of curious and like to take adventures. Also, Petit Bonhomme is to create for catching the sparkling eyes from little kids and taking care of their skin. For the sustainable approach, firstly, I apply zero waste pattern thinking in the garments, the waste fabrics are used for both functional and decorative parts, for instance, the pockets on the dress and the shorts, and the ears, which sew on the backpack.
Secondly, taking opinion from parents, they tend to choose natural fibers for their kids because the concern of health, and the characters of natural fibers are breathable and comfortable, hence, I source environmental friendly materials for this collection. The jersey and plain weave fabrics are 100 percent cotton, certificated with GOTS, meanwhile, to prevent the negative impacts of screen printing ink, I select the vegan water-based ink from HyprPrint TexPro, which is free of contaminants and certificated from Ökotex100. Most of all, “co-creation” inspires me to make this collection, despite the prints, the garments are finished with milk-white or non-colored fabrics. I wish kids can boldly color their clothes with their creativity, before they wear them, which let them feel themselves participating in making the garments.
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TENDERNESS: THE TEXTURE OF AGE
Integrating longevity and aesthetic in the cross-generational clothing design
I envision a world where sustainable fashion is touchable and around our lives. As a result, I want to encourage people to be curious about sustainability through my work “Tenderness: the texture of age”. As a designer, I intend to develop a daily wear collection, presenting the practicality and simplicity of clothing, meanwhile, concentrating on improving detail designs. This collection is designed for fast-growing kids and grandmother, for sustainable focuses, I pay attention to prolong garments’ lifespan and minimize pre-consumer waste.
Aiming to integrate longevity and aesthetic in this collection, I structure the design concept “Design with Mindfulness”, which inspires from Japanese Zen. Mindfulness-based design thinking is to nourish our fashion environment, which means we need to regard the fashion environment as ourselves and take care of it.
For children’s wear, the main concern is the size problem, most parents have to buy them new clothes every season. Average shows that they grow at least 40 cm from 2 to 8 years old, to solve this problem, I design trans-functional clothes to grow with kids. Then, for grandmother, most of them have experienced with fitting problems with ready-made clothing, meanwhile, they prefer to dress independently and keep clothing as long as possible. I create clothes with wrinkles which adapt to different body types and easy-to-wear.
These designs were involved in the concept of waste-minimization by planning geometrical pattern, which reduces the textile waste from cutting process. And, focusing on slow-making by manipulating shibori and natural dye to skip the mass production, highlighting the essential of slowness among nowadays’ fast fashion industry.
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MATERIAL RESEARCH
Mulberry silk and hand-pleating
Petit Bonhomme
photographer Reiting Lee model Jhinuk
Tenderness: the texture of age photographer Charles Su & Chiayu H. models A. Herrman, Sophia & Mia
© Chia Yu Hsieh - all right reserved
www.hsieh-chiayu.com
