welcome back to another blessedarch video. Our Guest today is Yimeng Yu who is an
interdisciplinary fashion designer and artist focusing on the future of fashion accessories
and materials in the context of the digital age she has been taking the Internet by a storm by
creating her beautiful virtual fashion she has collaborated with Brands like Vogue and Mercedes
and has truly revolutionized the digital fashion industry our talk today revolves
around understanding her journey and her design process so without further wait let's go to Yimeng
hey Yimeng welcome to blessedarch you know I'm I've been a fan of your work for quite a while
I've been senior designs for quite a while so um I was so excited when you said yes for the
interview and welcome to the channel thank you very much for inviting me and I'm very happy to
be here to share my story and discuss with you so uh in our video today we're gonna of course talk
about your journey we're going to talk about your designs we're going to talk about your process
I want to start with knowing a little bit about your education so you studied fashion design at
the Royal College of Art um so tell me about your time there what is it about fashion that that Drew
you to towards it oh yes I graduated from Royal College of Art at 2019 and I studied fashion as
well however one of my favorite advantage of RCA is that it has no clear discipline boundaries and
it is totally interdisciplinary and both within fashion major or the whole school so I think this
system has a great influence on me cultivating my interdisciplinary way of thinking and working
process this is why I am now obsessed with the creation of digital fashion and which is actually
more of a combination of fashion and CGI but also other more Technologies such as VR and AR and more
so that's my journey in RSA and our uh fashion Department had Zowie broach and always let us know
that we should find new Landscapes and create our own design language and do not repeating the past
so I think this is very impressive for me so the new method of working in digital fashion
and the new experience it brings the sustainable customizable and the zero with the feature also
makes me think this is a direction worth exploring you know you touched upon digital fashion so
for my audience who don't know what digital fashion means uh could you could you give an an
introduction to it what makes an item of clothing digital so normally we call digital fashion and
we consider it as a virtual session which is only existed in the virtual world but for me as I am a
traditional traditional trained fashion designer and I think digital fashion contains two branches
and one is the virtual version which is designed by digital technology which only exists in the
digital world and the other is the physical fashion which is designed and manufactured
by digital whole technology digital fashion can break the boundaries of physical world to
achieve some new forms structures materials and Silhouettes which beyond the reality and create
the Innovative artistic language which is not like the clothes that we wear in our daily life so it
can be something new and something Innovative so I think both ways are digital fashion so when we
have the clear definition or the application scenario we can know whether we are talking
about digital fashion as a as data images or entities so that's what I think what is digital
fashion so when did you start exploring digital fashion was it something that you dabbled in when
you were in college actually I integrated digital tours into my design process very early but just
the things uh 2020 because the cov id 19 and we all blocked at home so I put my research to the
digital fashion as the core so it's kind of a long journey but it's uh it's a research core change so
yeah that's my journey so how do you make your digital designs what is the process like and
and what softwares do you work with uh actually I used a lot of software to create digital fashion
uh it depends on what kind of forms and materials I want to achieve for example I usually use a clo
3D or Marvelous Designer to make the fabric simulated closing and used Rhino Cinema 4D to
make the sculptural clothing so I will dabble to a lot of software I just choose the right
one in the right stage I think what is unique amount about my design process is the algorithm
assistive generative process compared to design directly I like to design a design machine for
me to generate the silhouettes and the structures and then integrate the results to a final design
so it's kind of like a process that using order to create disorder and balance the complex things
so um in this case my designs are unpredictable but controllable apart from the design perspective
in production I also would use software like Photoshop to make the image greater or other
3D rendering software and I need to control every sectors and details in the whole process
so for example as you saw some of my works are the real people wearing the digital garments so
it needs a lot of process I need to compose the digital dresses onto a real person's photo so
it requires a long and the precise process so I need to make a body which is the digital twin to
the real people and also I need to simulate the closing on the digital Avatar and also I need
to consider the lighting light setting which need to be the same as the people's photo and also the
proper rendering to fit the post so there there are a lot of process and every stage needs to be
controlled precisely so from my own perspective I think designs not only the closing itself
but also the whole process in production so the design can permeate in every sectors so this is
my process of making a digital wearing creation is the process of Designing any different when
you're designing let's say physical clothing uh is it different from when you are designing something
digital I think it's quite different and in terms of both working process and efficiency when I
design I don't need to follow the traditional process of making clothes I can start from
anywhere I want such as starting from a part of our body for example starting from our shoulder
or our arm or our leg wherever I want and I don't need to consider the influence of gravity vectors
uh and the limitation of perspective because in the real government making where you do the
draping you need to consider uh where should you start and also uh you need to control if
the fabric falling down so I think that that's the reason that I don't need to consider the gravity
in the virtual world there is no physical rules to follow so I think this is a very very magic
way to free my imagination and also at the same time when I design a digital closing it's real
time calculated and rendered so I can know I can have a real-time interaction with the designing
which means that I can see the final outcomes at any time and I can make amend at any time so
it it greatly improved my design efficiency and I don't need to spend a lot of period of time to uh
to testing or making Fabric or making a draping to see the final outcome in the physical world I can
do everything just sitting in front of my computer so I think this is quite different and a digital
design is quite efficient but also they have similar place because no matter virtual fashion or
physical fashion they are all fashion so they are clothing the design elements we need to consider
are the same and the human body is what we are targeting for so to some degree I think they
also have similar place but I still love the way of using digital tool it's actually interesting to
hear you know now this the field that you're doing uh you know uh what you're doing is very very
unconventional you you said you started uh heavily going towards it especially during the cov id time
2020 were you sort of scared or hesitant before becoming a digital couture designer no actually
uh I did deliberately want to become a digital fashion designer because for me the application
of digital technology in fashion design is a gift given to me by the technology development
of the current ERA so uh making digital fashion is my response to the new technology
perhaps many years later the technological Revolution will bring newer design tools and
newer productivity and application platforms so perhaps more forms of innovative fashion designs
were emerged so I think digital technology is a tool for me the core of fashion design is always
keeping the same I think digital fashion is a category of fashion design so I think compared
to scared or hesitant I have more curiosity and excitement because computational design
way can bring me endless surprises and Innovation possibilities and every time I learn more I feel
that I have opened a totally new world so uh at least for now I'm never tired of it and willing to
continue to learn more and create more and maybe in the future I will Embrace newer technology
but also keeping the core of fashion design today do you also dabble in physical clothes or do you
solely focus on digital designs I I dabble in both digital and physical clothes and so maybe some
people know me through digital fashion but I also also kept doing keep doing physical fashion and
textile and material design uh I didn't release them because it takes longer time to make it real
so maybe in the future I will release some of my physical work and I think digital fashion and the
physical fashion are two different ways of design which also correspond to different application
scenarios and they don't they don't conflict with each other but I think they can make each other
stronger to some degree I think that digital designing helped me a lot in physical design
so yeah I think I can I think it's interesting to combine them together like what I said before that
that 3d printed garment or any other garment that produced by digital manufacturing so if you had
to pick some of your designs as your favorite the ones that you have created uh which one would you
pick I would like to pick a collection which is the curvature collection uh which are the dresses
that made by the layers of waves I think that's my favorite collection I remember that collection and
it's just beautiful thank you very much so usually on this channel every guest that we come I ask for
advice that uh for younger students or younger designers out there so if somebody is interested
in doing what you do and create digital fashion like you do uh what advice would you give to them
I would like to say that um study the software is important uh maybe at the beginning you don't know
how to create a full garment on the body but if you are familiar with the software you can develop
your skills and you can and even they can give you some inspiration because sometimes for example uh
when I when I make my design I normally will use the computational design way so which is setting a
setting your rules for computer to help me with the outcomes so uh it's not the things that
my brain can think about so I think it's quite interesting and also maybe sometimes when I play
with the software I will find some interesting uh effects for example the particle effects for
example the uh the Water effects well I know how to use them then I can make them into garments
so I think it's important to know the software well and to choose your favorite software because
different software have have different advantages and they can make different things so the first
thing is to know what you want to do and the second thing is to know what kind of software
can achieve this and I I hope to see more uh peer artists and designers and I I also have
a lot of favorites designers and artists and I think it's a quite nice ecology yes that's
actually some very very interesting advice because a lot of people talk about the fact that when you
learn softwares you might just get trapped with what they can do but what you said is also very
very true that softwares are tools and they can open up new gateways for you new ways of
computing that you might not have been doing before so thank you so much that was brilliant
brilliant advice and yeah I think that is it uh thank you so much Yimeng thank you for taking out
the time and thank you for being on this channel and answering all the questions and sharing your
journey thank you very much for inviting and I'm very happy to be here and I hope we can have more
communication in the future and that was it you guys that was my interview with Yimeng how did
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