shawna wu on making it as a young designer now
Female Singapore|April 2022
Recently the Singapore-born Taiwanese artisan has seen her hand-crafted creations – gauzy, gothic-charged knits so sensual they blur the boundaries between clothes and lingerie – turn up on digital-age celebrities. The virtual influencer Lil Miquela; the 1.3 million-follower-strong models/reality TV stars, the Clermont Twins; even Charli XCX who wore a custom number to the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards. It’s still early days though for her namesake label, which she officially registered as a business in New York (where she’s been based since 2013) only this year. And she refuses to let all that fame get to her. Here, her advice to other young fashion talents as told to Keng Yang Shuen.
Keng Yang Shuen
shawna wu on making it as a young designer now

HAVE A CLEAR SOCIAL PURPOSE

“Always design with a purpose. I don’t want to make stuff that's too easily available elsewhere because as a designer, I feel that I should make something that is of service to a cultural legacy. For me, that’s Chinese knotting (a central motif in Wu’s work) – a dying art form. It’s also important to help it evolve; give it a new form so that it continues to be alive (cue her corsets and bra tops crafted entirely using the technique and often out of leather). If your art helps to serve people in the community, that’s even better.”

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