"Sono nata per copiare" (I was born to copy), Venice 2015

There are always various pain, fear, and embarrassment in the process of doing art and design. Prejudice has been the strongest inconvenience since I moved to Italy eight years ago. As a designer I have no choice but to face that. Instead of escaping, rejecting or looking for more positive significance from the critique, accepting might be a shameless but much more comfortable way to overcome any difficulty in the process of my fashion design activity. Fashion needs to be more open and able to accept difference.
Like many fashion students, I’ve always liked to be creative from the beginning. I’ve even found some way to be considered as creative when participating in many projects in fashion school. At the same time, the well-established reputation that Chinese plagiarize, has already spread throughout the world, especially in creative industry like fashion. These years in Europe and USA, I’ve heard about thousands of stories that Chinese people copy from whoever and wherever, in anyway possible. In one of these stories someone said in front of me: “You (Chinese) are born to copy.” Someone else said: “Oh you’re different from those Chinese I knew before. You are creative!” After hearing so many times of these kind of statement, I finally felt tired to treat myself as a designer who has endless original ideas. I decide to follow what other people say, and even to prove that.
Here I put myself in the worst condition as possible when a designer’s creativity is exhausted. I put myself in the worst point of view that a Chinese is born to copy, so that I could review this prejudged collective identity (or real identity) better than ever, through an analysis of my own experience in western fashion
school; a research on Chinese copy-cat culture, both in ancient and contemporary times; and an exercise of appropriation of seven hats in seven days, using real imperfect materials and techniques. I would like to realize a hypothetical originality that I might also truelly possess in my blood, sweat and tears.