Can you tell us the story behind PSEUDO/POEMS.
The brand’s lead designer, Mingyan Yang, graduated from Parsons School of Design in 2016 with a speciality in womenswear. That year, she won the UNIQLO Global Competition which gave her the opportunity to work at its HQ in Tokyo as a womenswear designer. Her design identity is characterized by marrying Western ideals of romantic beauty with Eastern standards of functionality, achieving a new form of soft femininity. The original inspiration for PSEUDO/POEMS derives from Rabindranath Tagore’s “Stray Birds” verse no. 204 – “The song feels the infinite in the air, the picture in the earth, the poem in the air and the earth; For its words have meaning that walks and music that soars.” PSEUDO/POEMS composes in garments, and the garments that are worn in turn becomes beautiful poems of the future.

Your brand statement is ”Several unfinished chapters”. Can you tell us more about the inspirations behind your brand and collections.
When we tried to deconstruct the definition of “poem”, we found that poem is actually an all-encompassing and complicated structure. If you want to disassemble it into parts, you will always get more than expected. People could use the word “poem” to describe various art forms such as dance, music, painting or even digital art. Poetry runs through art and history. As an ongoing brand, we hope that everything we create could harmoniously build a whole during the process of creation, then each stage is also called a “chapter” for us. As long as the creation continues, the chapters will remain unfinished.

What about your creative process, how do you start working on a collection?
It usually starts from tiny fragments of any kind of art, such as books, painting, dance, music or even an old photo. We like to make the fragments of these poems and present them in front of the audience through the second artistic rendering with a soft female perspective. Also, skin-friendly fabrics inspire us a lot. We are always attracted by silk, cotton, hemp and various natural materials with texture. Through the careful design process, the characteristics of the fabric would be completely presented to the audience. Lightweight silk fabrics enhance the interaction with the body and skin-friendly feeling. We use layered silk fabrics to intersect with the body. Our design could only be completed and sublimated when people are wearing them on.