Quad Bike Glamour, New Waves: Tingzhi Liu

Back in her native Singapore, fashion didn’t always seem like a realistic educational route. While her peers were already deep into standard degrees in law, business and engineering, Tingzhi dreamt of studying at the prestigious Central Saint Martins. However, “studying anything non-academic, let alone at CSM just seemed so far away and out of reach,” she recalls as we talk with her. “I had this idea that the designers you saw in Vogue were from some faraway planet.” Overwhelmed by the idea of a pure fashion programme, she applied for Fashion Merchandising at London College of Fashion, which seemed like “a good compromise between something creative and academic,” but when a CSM representative came to Singapore to hold interviews for the college’s foundation course, she took the opportunity to challenge herself. “I worked for 3 months to build up a portfolio, went for the interview and got accepted. I tried both Textiles and Fashion on the Foundation pathway and it felt really natural; one thing led to another,” she says.

“IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT CONSTRUCTING AN IMAGE, ABOUT TRYING TO FIND A BALANCE BETWEEN COLOUR, PROPORTION, THE SIZE OF THE PRINTS AND THE LENGTH OF THE DRESS.”

“ONE LESSON I TOOK AWAY FROM DIOR WAS DEFINITELY THE IMPORTANCE OF WORKING SMART RATHER THAN JUST WORKING HARD.”

Placed in the fashion print pathway, she enjoyed the extreme level of independence that characterises the BA Fashion Design programme at Central Saint Martins. “You see your tutors for maybe 30 minutes each week and then the rest of the week is completely self structured,” she explains. “This environment really suited me, as I really enjoy designing, sketching and draping for hours before showing it to someone.” Her oeuvre began to take shape during her placement year, when she got the incredible opportunity to do an internship at Dior’s gilded halls in Paris. “At Dior, we got to do everything;” she says, with her work ranging from tailoring and embroidery to print and helping out in the fittings with Raf. “One lesson I took away from Dior was definitely the importance of working smart rather than just working hard.”

However, besides getting valuable and eye-opening insight into the functionalities of a big couture brand, it was the development of several strong friendships while working in the studio that helped shape Tingzhi’s work as she was entering into her second year. After finishing her internship, she decided to go quad biking with her new friends in the deserts of Morocco. Dressed in amazing garments from Dior, Dries van Noten and Balmain that they had acquired super cheaply from sample sales, the girls went riding through the desert, getting sandy and dirty in the dunes under the North African sun. “It was quite a funny sight, like a scene from some low-budget adventure film,” she laughs, “four girls on dirt bikes dressed in sequins and shorts in the desert!”

“I HAD THIS IDEA OF A REALLY GLAMOROUS BUT TOUGH GIRL TRAVELLING ALL OVER THE WORLD, ALONE ON HER BIKE, AND RETURNING WITH ALL THESE AMAZING CARPET TEXTILES DRAPED ALL OVER HER.”

As remnants of this hazy memory, the graduate collection of Tingzhi Liu picks up on these symbols of glamour, roughness and what she calls “the feeling of freedom, spontaneity and energy I felt then.” In her garments, elements of classic multi-layered couture dresses of the ‘50s clash with rough biker jackets in dark leather, creating a hedonistic, super powerful and larger-than-life kind of vibe. They ooze glamour through their humorous bricolage of idiosyncratic jewellery, integrated North African rugs, DIY-accessories (like rope) and nostalgic, romantically embroidered biker boots. “For me it’s always about constructing an image,” she explains. “About trying to find a balance between colour, proportion, the size of the prints and the length of the dress; the use of plain leather vs. fringe and printed fabric etc. It does sound like a lot! But it makes sense to me when I’m designing.”

Behind this vivid source of inspiration, it is clear that Tingzhi is a skilful researcher and re-negotiator of images. As she dusted off any sand leftovers in the studios of CSM, Tingzhi looked at Irving Penn’s images of 1950s Dior dresses while developing the silhouettes of her garments. “That tied in with my idea of using multiple layers and textures of carpet fabrics, prints and materials,” she explains. Similarly, she integrated rough ropes to break up her dresses after finding an image of a rug seller in Morocco. “It’s a really key image in my whole collection and all the draping work developed from it. I had this idea of a really glamorous but tough girl travelling all over the world, alone on her bike, and returning with all these amazing carpet textiles draped all over her.” Such an image speaks to itself, and indeed translated as her voluptuous gowns walked the runway at this year’s graduate show.

As I ask about the future, Tingzhi seems positive and open to ideas. She’s already creating some textiles for her friend’s new brand in Singapore, and overall the idea of starting her own brand doesn’t seem impossible. Still, she is aware of the general tendency of CSM alumni and how important it is to battle racism within the industry. “If you look at the school’s alumni, there are so many great names — but few are from Asia, even though in UAL there are so many talented Asian students. It’s getting better already with designers like Masha Ma and Yifang Wan, but still there’s a lot of room for growth. I’d really like to change that,” she concludes.