In recent years, a large number of ambitious Chinese youths have managed successfully enter prestigious traditional fashion schools and universities of the west, thus making a name for themselves from the very start.

This is the case for Ying, the innovative fashion designer based in New York. Recently graduating from Pratt Institute, Ying has gained invaluable experience by working for Vera Wang and Jill Stuart as well as developing her own unique aesthetics and fashion philosophy. Mixing a variety of vibrant color schemes, outstanding patterns, and handpicked textiles, she has managed to capture the eyes of the fashion elite with her bold, powerful designs and strong storytelling. Drawing inspiration from real stories and contemporary art mixed with youth culture, Ying shaped a brand with a unique fashion approach that had her selected for the Pratt graduate fashion show and CFDA Fashion Future Graduate Exhibition during NYFW. A strong sustainability advocate, she worked on her eco-conscious project, later selected for the Fashion + Sustainability: "Waste Not, Want Not" Exhibition.

Ying is a designer that loves to explore the unexpected; through her bold, rather abstract vision of the world, she creates fashion items with vibrant colors and delicate patterns using only the best of fabrics. Her collections focus on innovation with special care for details that ensure her design originality; she is a storyteller of the truest yet strangest sartorial stories of the big city. Deeply rooted in youth culture, her work is the best example of the “light luxury” of the future, combining unique craftsmanship in more accessible prices and with a sustainability focus. In her website, she declares her love for the slower, pre-fast fashion times where clothes were worn again and cherished due to the effort they required. This meaningful fashion journey is at the core of anything she does as she is, in her own words:

"Trying to recreate a lifestyle from the past: when every single dress is precious to a girl, and women would fix and change their clothes by themselves, decorate their clothes with beads for embroidery."

Ying’s focus on sustainability was further developed in her innovative Reborn project collection. The craftsmanship is outstanding; many pieces of this collection were made with hand-treated fabric developed in-house by using a “felting” technique on silk fabrics like organza. The designer also used other handcrafts such as beading to bind multiple layers of fabric together while adding details and textures at the same time. Bold, powerful prints inspired by vintage photos were individually sketched along with detailed embroidery reminiscent of the times where women used to handcraft their own clothes with the utmost care. In that process. Ying collected wasted/unwanted fabric/vintage clothes from companies and factories and reuse them in this collection in unexpected ways with stunning results. According to the designer: “irreversible waste is created every day during the apparel production process. Therefore project "Reborn" is created to minimize excess fabric and play with existing resources alone. This project is based on research on “What is wasted? Why is it wasted? How to fix it?”. Production runs are wholly dependent upon the size of each fabric when we find it.”

FANGYÁN’s core philosophy has always been supportive of the newly addressed concept of sustainability through transparent and design best practices. Curating Yang’s Reborn project for the Regeneration, the popular Artists & Fleas’ new market dedicated to vintage, thrift, and preloved fashion have therefore come naturally. The designer’s collection perfectly showcases the next-generation qualities advocated by the Regeneration generation a series of creative businesses dedicated to creating a fashion revolution through recycling. The new market is a platform for entrepreneurs with online footprints and personal brands to collectively come together and create, an IRL place to shop and sell perfectly aligned with FANGYÁN’s core qualities of sustainability comes first. In fact, by curating Yang’s work under the Reborn project, FANGYÁN hopes to launch our sustainability collection and advocate for the people/future-centering manufacturing approach. We believe we are at the forefront of meaningful fashion -meets -sustainability best practices scene, as we showcase the best up- and- coming Chinese fashion talent. In that sense, our collaboration with Yang marks the beginning of a large, exciting chapter, one we can’t help but feel excited about.