Linke - Artinfo

CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: LEE KA-SING AND KAI CHAN; TWO IMAGES, SHOJI FUJII AND YIQING YIN.
The Sculptural Couture
of Yiqing Yin
A French designer shapes fabrics on
the body body to create soft feminine armor
By Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop
YOUNG FRENCH COUTURIER Yiqing Yin
has found rapid success since she
launched her first collection in 2010. That
year, she presented her creations at the
prestigious Hyères International ternational
Festival, won the Grand Prix of Creation
awarded by the City ty of of Paris, and and saw
her her designs designs displayed in in the the windows of of
the Culture Ministry and at the Théâtre
National de Chaillot. The e following year,
her her second second collection, collection, the Dreamer, Dreamer, was
exhibited at the Hôtel de Crillon illon during the March 2011 Women’s Women’s
Fashion week curated by Vogue Paris. A A few months later, she
was awarded the Andam Prize for First Collections. Then en in
2012, she debuted as an invited guest during Haute Couture uture
Fashion Week in Paris and successfully launched a readyreadyto-wear collection internationally. I recently recently sat down with the
27-year-old 27-year-old designer for a discussion about her practice.
A lot of your designs are very sculptural.
Have you studied art?
I studied arts and crafts at the École Nationale tionale Supérieure des
Arts Décoratifs for five years. We did many things, from
sculpture and stage design to graphic design and photography.
We studied space, objects, and images all together through
different forms of expression. I always loved the sculptural
element. Sculpture is very important when you put it in situ; it
comes with the space surrounding it. That’s at’s very important. important.
And I see fashion as a way of sculpting on a living body as a
support, using fabric as a medium. But it is something that is
always moving, so it ’s ’s movement within a space and it needs to
relate to its environment. It’s ’s a moving sculpture, and the
movement and the imprint that the body body leaves leaves behind as it
moves—the grace, the the body body language—is all part of of the final
result. In a way, I have the original idea but it ’s actually the
person who wears the garment who finishes it.
What was the starting point for your Spring-Summer
2013 collection?
The e thread, the line, and the unweaving motion of matter were were
the starting point. My mood mood board was dark, muted, and austere,
with pictures of sculptures by the Russian artist Naum um Gabo,
who sculpted ethereal, hyperbolic volumes out of thread
without ever invading the space. I was also influenced by thread thread
sculptures by the artist Kai Chan. There ere were also bondage
BlouinArtinfo.comAsiA | MARCH/APRIL 2013
artonthecatwalk
Above, two designs
from the Spring-
Summer 2013
couture collection
by Yiqing Yin, who
cites the influence
of Russian sculptor
Naum Gabo
(1890–1977) and
contemporary
Canadian artist Kai
Chan, whose 2012
silk thread installation,
Scent of Roses,
is at upper left .
The Art of Living