Jake Liu is originally from Qingdao in China, a port city famous for its beer and seafood. He began his fashion studies in the U.K. completing his Honors degree at The Manchester School of Art. After completing the degree, he interned with designers Ada Zanditon and David Komai n London. He then briefly worked in show production in Shanghai Fashion Week and in 2018 he moved to Melbourne, Australia to undertake his two years Masters of Fashion Design degree at RMIT University.

My latest collection, No Everlasting Eternity, began with research and experiments into an unbalanced silhouette within my 2018 collection and a merging of sports and tailoring genres. Conceptually I am interested in the depiction of the non-idealized and what this can say about a garment's relationship to the body. Through rigorous toiling and sampling of form and material combinations, I settled upon the backpack as a simple but recognizable distortion of a ‘neutral silhouette’, especially when worn under outerwear. Something that was also really important to me within this was that I produce functional unisex-wear. I also wanted to challenge traditional and expected sportswear fabrications throughout the collection. I used a lot of traditional luxury natural fabrics like silk satin and crepe, quality fine wool suiting and cashmere. By combining these fabrications with standardized sportswear trims and finishes not only elevated the garments but in many ways confused their initial reading. A lot of the character building within the collection was also informed by Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1973 surreal-fantasy film ‘The Holy Mountain’. This influence also carried through into many of the 1970s archetypes explored in the collection such as flare pants, rain mac coat and disco shirts as well as the colour / graphic decisions.


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