When I think of Yun Qu’s designs, I think of her ‘crazy’ sleeves and the attention to detail throughout her entire body of work. I have an affinity for sleeve design and the sleeves in her collection Clair De Lune, in my opinion, are a masterpiece in construction.
Yun Qu is part of a group of contemporary designers who are championing a movement of slowing fashion down by approaching fashion as an anthropological, cultural, and ecological practice. Clair De Lune, a seasonless handmade collection made from dead stock materials – luxe biodegradable fabrics of tapestry, cotton, and silk – designed for little impact on the planet, is on view in a first of its kind exhibition, “CLOTH, Construct, CULTURE: fashion builds a story” … Here is a preview, a sneak peek of the work of Yun Qu.
Trained in classical music, the collection took inspiration from French composer Claude Debussy, French Impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Japanese painter and printmaker, Katsushika Hokusai. Qu’s use of deadstock materials prompted me to ask why she sourced these particular materials, knowing that the use of deadstock takes imagination. She said, “when I was designing the collection, I found some particular fabric that was inspired by Katsushika Hokusai. To be honest, I just wanted to use those beautiful fabrics in this collection that’s all, haha!”
Qu’s research for this body of work encouraged her to demand extraordinary sleeve construction of which I found the real magic. One particular sleeve is an exaggerated puff accordion sleeve that is part of her deconstructed corset top and mini skirt ensemble. In sharing her creative intent for ‘crazy’ sleeves, she revealed, “I’ve always liked crazy sleeves so I’ve incorporated exaggerated sleeves in all of my collections. I studied sleeve construction from the Baroque period a couple of years ago and I really liked how they were constructed. So, I decided to use the Baroque sleeves as references and I have to design some crazy sleeves in each collection just for my own taste.” She also studied “Transformation Reconstruction” techniques from designer and innovative pattern maker Shingo Sato.
Sleeves were not the only area where she pushed creative boundaries in this collection. Handbags. Her first release of handbags demonstrates how she is not confined to traditional cut and construction methods. Influenced by the music of Debussy and paintings by Renoir, she created bags similar to the clothes, as seen in the Masques Corset bag. It’s a handbag version of the corset top, titled Moon And Shadow Cropped Top.
She recounts how the design process of the bags was quite similar to clothes, “I would say it was very interesting to create the bags. I only designed clothes in the past, and this is the first time that I designed bags in the collection. The bags started with very ambiguous sketches. I didn’t know what kind of bags I wanted to design, so I just improvised and worked directly with the fabric and played with shapes, ruffles and accessories. And that’s how I created the Clair De Lune Bag and Masques Corset Bag.”
Thirteen (13) objects will be on view including four bags.
More About Yun Qu
More on Yun Qu: Debussy, Renoir, and Hokusai: REIMAGINED Dead Stock at the Hand of Yun Qu | EDGE Talks to Yun Qu
Exhibition Details
CLOTH, Construct, CULTURE: fashion builds a story, curated by Rhonda P. Hill, 24 October 2023–24 January 2024, Parallax Art Center, Portland, Oregon, USA
Feature photo: Clair De Lune, courtesy of Yun Qu | Photographer: Bochun Cheng @bochun.c; Make Up Artist / Hair: Liana Qin @lianaqin_muartist; Model: Vannah @vannahmodel
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