The ODD Project Meets Odella Yue
Fearless, fun and spontaneous, this is Odella Yue. London based, she belongs to a new wave of designers influenced by humanity and the world around, raising fashion to a new spectrum of post-modernism. Today The ODD Project has had the chance to interview this enigmatic talent.
Where are you from? Age?
My name is Odella Yue. I‘m 22 years old and I’m originally from China.
You have just graduated from Kingston University in Fashion. What made you study fashion design?
My mom is my biggest inspiration. She has always been the most stylish and intelligent woman I know. She has an amazing collection of fabulous garments and accessories from the 80’s and 90’s. It was the best treasure hunt for me when I was a kid. I used to dig up all the beautiful garments and try them on, walk in front of the mirror with curiosity and excitement. And it is just that simple, I want to design for people, I want to make people feel the same excitement and joy that I felt when I was little.
How would you define yourself as a designer?
I am a new generation explorer and creator who wishes to make a change through the digital highway.
I’m working on a new designer to consumer marketing strategy now. Many people have been interested in the game I designed and the concept of my collection so I am interviewing and working with computer game designers and physiologists making adjustments to make the game more entertaining and interactive.
What do you think about the buzz on social media?
I think it provides a great platform for creative individuals to showcase and promote their works. It also shows how important it is to understand your designer identity and deliver it to the audience.
My name is Odella Yue. I‘m 22 years old and I’m originally from China.
You have just graduated from Kingston University in Fashion. What made you study fashion design?
My mom is my biggest inspiration. She has always been the most stylish and intelligent woman I know. She has an amazing collection of fabulous garments and accessories from the 80’s and 90’s. It was the best treasure hunt for me when I was a kid. I used to dig up all the beautiful garments and try them on, walk in front of the mirror with curiosity and excitement. And it is just that simple, I want to design for people, I want to make people feel the same excitement and joy that I felt when I was little.
How would you define yourself as a designer?
I am a new generation explorer and creator who wishes to make a change through the digital highway.
Has having your collection selected for the Kingston MA Fashion graduate show affected you somehow?
The show is always exciting and brings me a feeling of self-fulfilment. It gathered good attention to my work and I made contact with some very talented and like-minded people at the after party.
I’m working on a new designer to consumer marketing strategy now. Many people have been interested in the game I designed and the concept of my collection so I am interviewing and working with computer game designers and physiologists making adjustments to make the game more entertaining and interactive.
What do you think about the buzz on social media?
I think it provides a great platform for creative individuals to showcase and promote their works. It also shows how important it is to understand your designer identity and deliver it to the audience.
What inspires you?
I have always been the nerdy one – game, comic books and science fiction, they are all great inspirations to me. They have formed one of the most entertaining parts of people’s everyday life and just like fashion, they allows you to dream and escape into a world of unfettered imagination. I also like to observe and listen to people, about their emotions, experiences, desires and dreams… honest responses and true stories are very fascinating.
What are your main references?
I’m such a sucker for disco and retro comics so there are lots of graphic elements and bold colours in my work. I studied artworks of Antonio Lopez and Hieronymus Bosch, they have very distinctive dramatic styles that I adore. I got addicted to Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, and it inspired my print designs and the design concept of my game.
What do you think about the buzz on social media?
I think it provides a great platform for creative individuals to showcase and promote their works. It also shows how important it is to understand your designer identity and deliver it to the audience.
How do you conceive the fashion industry today?
The fashion industry is still not sustainable, not only from environmental aspect but also creative aspect. It is encouraging an unhealthy consuming habit; the never-ending speeding process of design and production cycle brings many limitations to designer’s creativity, and making sustainable design even more difficult. But there are slow but positive changes and more and more attentions are paid towards diversity, creativity, sustainability and consumer satisfaction.
During LFW we had the opportunity to see your latest collection. What is the story behind it?
My fashion collection is an exploration of my inner mind and my personal experiences, and it shows how I perceive the world around me—its beauty and flaw, as well as my emotion towards it. It demonstrates how I have conquered my own fear and transformed it into inspiration. All the unexpected events that happened during my self-exploration triggered my fashion collection to develop spontaneously, and it presented itself in an authentic emotional way.
I experienced an unfortunate dental malpractice that caused three month of constant pain, followed by four more surgeries. I had never truly appreciated my healthy body, never celebrated my painless life, but after a sleepless week in unbearable pain, I started to see things differently. I recorded all my thoughts and all the bizarre and terrifying nightmares— I analyzed my dream with psychoanalysis theories and transformed them into graphic prints which were used in my fashion collection, and somehow during the process, my fear and anxiety were reduced and I realized what an incredible privilege it was to be able to experience and enjoy every day with functional body and clear mind.
My graduate project includes an 8-look collection as well as a video game, the aims of which are to focus on the exploration of the dream, and to trigger wearers’ responses by exploring the wonder of our internal emotions through understanding the construction of our perception and the implication of our dreams. I developed an experimental interactive design game with Video Game designer Rhys Johnson to explore the possible potential of human’s undeveloped creativity that allows consumers to generate unique and exclusive print design for themselves based on their subconscious world and behaviour.
I experienced an unfortunate dental malpractice that caused three month of constant pain, followed by four more surgeries. I had never truly appreciated my healthy body, never celebrated my painless life, but after a sleepless week in unbearable pain, I started to see things differently. I recorded all my thoughts and all the bizarre and terrifying nightmares— I analyzed my dream with psychoanalysis theories and transformed them into graphic prints which were used in my fashion collection, and somehow during the process, my fear and anxiety were reduced and I realized what an incredible privilege it was to be able to experience and enjoy every day with functional body and clear mind.
My graduate project includes an 8-look collection as well as a video game, the aims of which are to focus on the exploration of the dream, and to trigger wearers’ responses by exploring the wonder of our internal emotions through understanding the construction of our perception and the implication of our dreams. I developed an experimental interactive design game with Video Game designer Rhys Johnson to explore the possible potential of human’s undeveloped creativity that allows consumers to generate unique and exclusive print design for themselves based on their subconscious world and behaviour.
What do you hate about fashion?
If there is light, there is shadow. The current relation between producer and consumer and environment is rather unhealthy.
The industry and its audience are growing very inpatient, the demand for great creativity and design is high but designers are often forced to vomit out brilliant designs in very short period of time, and this encourages problematic consumer behaviours.
The existing issues of excessive consumption and mass production in global scale, fashion tokenism and fast fashion are causing many problems in eco-environment and sustainability.
Which are the main challenges an emerging designer faces nowadays?
It is a very competitive and saturated industry–there are so many new talented designers emerging every year but the demand for new emerging designers is not increasing as fast. Also it is costly and complicated in process to start your own business.
Are you ODD?
I think there is ODD spirit in me:)
Odella Yue @odella_della
