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Ziyi Yang

Ziyi Yang

Qingdao, China
UNIVERSITY/COLLEGE Royal College of Art
Title of Work Killer Monk - Ephemeral beauty
SPECIALISMS Non-gendered

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flora.mclean@rca.ac.uk

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Ziyi Yang is a interdisciplinary designer specialising in fashion design and visual communication. Her practice explores the relationships between structure, material, the body, and space, drawing inspiration from architecture, art, cultural research, religious symbolism, and traditional pattern-cutting techniques. She views clothing not only as something to be worn, but also as a medium capable of carrying ideas, emotions, and cultural memory. In her design process, Ziyi often begins with geometric forms, flat structures, and one-piece pattern cutting. Through cutting, reconstruction, removal, and displacement, she reconsiders the established relationship between garments and the body. She is particularly interested in structural absence, incompleteness, and the new silhouettes and ways of wearing that emerge when conventional garment functions are disrupted. Geometric archetypes such as squares, circles, rectangles, and cross-shaped structures are frequently translated into patterns, silhouettes, and spatial relationships, allowing two-dimensional planes to develop into dynamic three-dimensional forms when worn. Material experimentation is also a central part of her practice. Through burning, destruction, assembly, suspension, and the contrast between soft and rigid materials, she explores the expressive potential of materials as they transform, disappear, and are reconstructed. She is interested in traces left on garment surfaces, the residues of material processes, and how these marks can communicate ideas of time, ephemerality, destruction, and renewal. Her work often creates a tension between precise structural order and uncontrollable material change, allowing garments to embody dualities such as rationality and emotion, stability and fragility, completeness and absence. Beyond the garments themselves, Ziyi places strong emphasis on visual presentation and spatial display. She considers photography, image editing, graphic design, installation, and exhibition design as extensions of the design process. Through the interaction between clothing, the body, the environment, and the act of viewing, she constructs complete visual narratives. For her, a garment is not an isolated object, but part of a dynamic relationship formed between the wearer, the exhibition space, and the viewer. Her work is characterised by a clear and restrained visual language, distinctive structural thinking, and strong conceptual narratives. By combining in-depth research, experimental pattern cutting, material exploration, craftsmanship, and visual communication, Ziyi continues to develop a recognisable design language while exploring the possibilities of fashion beyond conventional function—as a medium for artistic expression, spatial construction, and cultural research.

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