The Digest | New Jersey Magazine
Issue link: https://magazines.vuenj.com/i/1347392
T hroughout history, fashion has been defined by all different kinds of innovations and styles. Now, Ying Gao is challenging everything we knew about it, in a movement to incorporate technology and raw human emotion into the clothes she designs. Gao is an acclaimed designer and professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal and previously served as the head of the Fashion and Accessories Design Department at the Geneva University of Art and Design. Yet she discovered her passion for design much earlier, beginning her dedication to fashion as simply a child mesmerized by clothes--the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition in Beijing, to be exact. She lived in communist China during the 80s, where everyone was uniformed and devoid of voguish expressions. But when her mother took her to see the exhibit, she was finally exposed to the wonders of elegant fashion. That night, Gao drew all night long. And from that moment, she began to develop her identity through the art of fashion. Her passion continued all throughout her adolescence, but when she moved to North America to pursue her dream, she found that the industry did not exactly promote the same individuality that made her love fashion in the first place. While she embraces aspects of the fashion industry, she draws a comparison between clothing, or what she sees as the substance of fashion, and fashion, the presiding phenomenon. According to Gao, there are clothes in North America that are not a part of the fashion industry, or vice versa. The fashion industry is, therefore, a complex balance between what can be defined as fashion, what can be defined as clothing, and which pieces call for an intersection. V U E N J .C O M 42