Inheritance Hand-Made Shoes – nice!
One of my favorite things about traveling is checking out local style. I love to see how people hack their fashion. I spent one morning wandering around a few trendy streets in Shanghai, popping in and out of little boutiques full of unique, but also very similar styles.
Back at home on my balcony with my plants and my silk owl shirt from Shanghai.
While I didn’t buy much, due mostly to size issues (my shoulders and hips are just too broad for most of what was on the rack) and financial restrictions (2500 RMB for a t-shirt?!), what I saw really inspired me.
Filming Audrey Zhao from REdesigns in her Shanghai studio.
My reason for being in China was to film and research the subject of making. One of the people we interviewed was Shanghai designer Audrey Zhao. Audrey calls her brand REdesigns because she believes that every design is a redesign and she loves the prefix ‘re.’ In fact, the names of her lines of bags and shoes all begin with ‘re’ – like REfresh, REcreate, etc.
Audrey explained that she got into fashion design after a friend brought her back a second-hand bag from Europe. Audrey loved the bag and eventually wore it out. She decided to patch it up, but also thought that she could take the style and make a new bag out of it. She made a prototype by hand, teaching herself to sew, and took it to a manufacturer who said he could do a run of 50, which seemed like a manageable number to her. Audrey stamped her logo on the bags and realized her endeavor was not just a personal one anymore, but that she was actually in business – she has been designing, or rather redesigning, bags ever since and has recently started a line of shoes.
My notes on the styles I saw in Shanghai fashion boutiques.
Aside from the ideas I got from window shopping high-end boutiques, I also drew a lot of inspiration from Audrey. Her take on fashion really made me feel like it’s something I can be a part of. And, I especially liked her philosophy on design and redesign. It seems to be a very distinct philosophy, especially among the more avant-garde Chinese, that echoes the philosophy of Shanzhai, “a highly distributed social network of factories, vendors, component producers, component traders, and design houses that share an approach to open sharing in many ways compatible with the global maker movement.” (from Make Magazine, scroll down to read the whole quote from Silvia Lindtner). The philosophy is that copying can be more than just stealing a design, it can also be improving and expanding upon that design.
After all this inspiration, I am excited to hack some clothes and accessories of my own. I have an idea for a messenger bag I might make from scratch or hack from something else, I want to make a skirt out of one of my husband’s old button downs, and I have a pair of Arlo’s broken overalls that I’ve been feeling daunted to start – but now, I’m ready to tackle these projects.
Bathroom selfie with flash before heading out for the evening.
In fact, like from the denim skirt I’ve already shared here, I have another thrifted DIY skirt I’ve been reluctant to wear and reluctant to share. But, being spurred on by all these awesome experiences in China, I finally decided to wear the skirt to an opening at Art Center College of Design last night and share it here.
Side and back view of the skirt I made from a thrifted skirt and a thrifted shirt.
I hacked this skirt out of a thrift store skirt and a thrift store shirt. In the above image, you can see that the shirt’s original collar and breast piece is flipped upside down and has become the slit of the skirt. I hope to make another trip out to the thrift stores next week to get some more shirts so I can work on some of the designs I drew in my sketchbook involving piecing together different shirts into one. I might also try to hack a translucent fabric overlay onto a lightweight sweatshirt and get working on my messenger bag and other projects. Stay tuned for more fashion hacks and please share with me yours as well!
And, if you want more on China style, check out my Pinterest board China Style and this awesome blog: Chinese People Do You Style.