This collection is an exploration of outdoor dress, a celebration of the ‘ordinary’ uniform. I aimed to contrast the silhouette of outdoor clothing that is traditionally un-gendered of masculine with hyper-feminine elements. I was inspired by modern and historical female adventurers: Emily Harrington and Lady Hester Stanhope.

I began with taking clothes people feel most comfortable and practical in, and wanted to elevate as well as feminise these ordinary garments. I took inspiration from baselayers, a garment used purely on a practical level, and experimented with different fastenings, seam and stitch details, creating a fully coverstitched garment with a placket running up from the hem of the sleeve, over the hood and down through the body. I implemented a lot of hand waxing in my collection, as it added structure and strength as well as waterproofing certain areas. On the corset above I painted the wax on the lower half to exaggerate the feminine silhouette.

The collection has a unified theme, yet each piece comes with a different recombination of unconventional pattern cutting and finishing. Zhang's design tells a story of how fashion pieces present a defined beauty and atmosphere, through the considered combination of fashion pieces and background. The resulting end products demonstrate the impression of the crash and fusion, between contemporary civilisation and eastern legacy.