Asian culture through textile art: Shawna Wu

Ancient oriental traditions in a modern key: from knots to the tea ceremony

After introducing you to the knitwear of the brand Calves , I rediscovered the beauty of knitwear and started looking. It seems right to me to have to talk about Shawna Wu ( @ shawnawux ), it’s always worth knowing.

“I love simple experiences and emotions: love, pain, conflict, confusion”.

Shawna Wu is a textile designer born in Singapore and residing in New York . These different environments informed her identity and her work, allowing her to cultivate empathy and recognize subcultures.

This sensitivity is evident in his creations, produced using traditional techniques such as the Chinese knot , the hand weaving and the natural dyeing . Of the latter, the designer makes it a real performative practice , not referring only to fashion.

If in Chinese culture knots symbolize luck and are exchanged between family and friends, Shawna transfigures them creating harnesses that bring to mind the rope of slavery art shibari .

Perfectly coherent with its push and pull relationship with its Asian origins, the “ experienced ” effect of the red strings that cling to the models in the collection is perfectly successful.

Shawna Wu’s philosophy is defined as a sensual and primordial experience, suitable for a woman who is touchy, emotional, dreamy and dark at the same time.

Shawna considers herself more a artist than a stylist and demonstrates it in the way she presents her creations.
His latest live performance combines fashion with music, cinematography and his love for subcultures: a live in which the fragility of the fabrics hides their underlying resistance.

The Chinese harnesses that transform shame into pride

In the 2018 in Singapore performance, however, a silent audience observed queer artists sipping tea wearing silk petticoats and mis-dyed knitwear in shades of red.

As previously mentioned, the art of natural dyeing used by Shawna Wu makes her a designer attentive to sustainability , in harmony with her philosophy of recovering materials and his personal production of fabrics. All this was born to have the complete control over the quality of his creations, the desire to create something that is primarily the result of love , care and attention .

While attention to waste is clearly a positive “trend” now in fashion and elsewhere, for the 24-year-old they present themselves as a sincere and considerate service, rather than an economic one.

“I am attracted to the potential of fashion , not to business. My art form involves fabrics and clothing, in addition to which I create also experiences and performances. The fashion industry is not working well enough for the environment and its workforce, hopefully it will change methodologies, seasonal programs and systems in the near future. My intention is to be real and emotional . “

Being the fashion industry the second most polluting in the world , not only from an environmental but also social point of view, the designer from Taiwanese origins undertakes to consider both the environmental impact and the working conditions of the people involved in the creation process.

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Viola Marchesi

Viaggiatrice e aspirante fashion designer. La creatività e il mio spirito libero sono ciò che meglio caratterizza il mio essere, un concentrato di positive vibes. Ho iniziato a scrivere quasi per gioco ma ho scoperto che mi piace più del previsto.