Representing the creative future

Designers
to Hire

Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system

What does it mean to ditch usual fabrics and invent a new organic matter for clothes?

In the age of COVID-19, when necessity dictates that we migrate our lives and work online more than ever before, Central Saint Martins BA Womenswear graduate, Scarlett Yang, is streaks ahead. Already more than adept at using digital technologies to transform her creative visions, when the BA show was cancelled due to the lockdown, Yang ditched the notion of creating a physical collection, deciding instead to simulate all but one of her final designs digitally in Cinema 4D. Yet, digital expertise is not the only string to Yang’s creative bow. Guided by her strong environmental conscience, the 24-year-old designer also developed a sustainable biomaterial for her final project that responds directly to its physical environment and is able to fully biodegrade in water within 24 hours.

Check Scarlett Yang’s portfolio on Pinterest

Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang, Lookbook
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system

Yang’s first foray into digital creative expression began when she was a teenager, during which time she was seriously immersed in gaming, cosplay and the world of Japanese manga. “I realized that I really liked the concept of expressing around the theme of the human body, examining identity through characters and clothing.” A self-described multi-disciplinary designer, her work today is a fascinating juxtaposition of the physical and the extreme virtual; an exploration of the ways in which these two opposing elements can be combined and subsequently interact with one another. She explains, “The project harnesses the powers of both nature and technology to display the beauty of natural life forms, challenging viewers with the concept of material life cycles and suggesting a new direction for sustainable fashion.”

“I have many hobbies, but one thing that I don’t do is reference fashion magazines. ”

For Yang, designing is largely a process of embedding abstract concepts, ideas and material curiosities into the context of her work. “I am quite open to different aesthetics, styles and references. I have many hobbies, but one thing that I don’t do is reference fashion magazines. I am really big on materiality, on examining things around us. I am also a very theoretical person – I am not a purely visual person.”

Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang, Design Devlopment

It was during Yang’s placement year that ideas for her final collection began to take shape. The designer spent time in both The Netherlands and Japan, where she did work experience in a sustainability-focused Biolab in Amsterdam, followed by an artist’s residency in Tokyo. It was in the Biolab that she began her research journey into algae design. Later, during her residency in Tokyo, she exhibited a media installation exploring virtual life and digitized fashion within a virtual showroom environment. Whilst in Japan, Yang was able to visit various factories and mills in Kyotango, where she discovered silk cocoon protein – also known as sericin – a by-product left in industrial wastewater after silk fibres are washed and boiled during the manufacturing process.

Through much research and material experimentation, the designer was able to formulate a biomaterial, coined Serpentine Lace, which utilises this silk cocoon waste product and combines it with algae extract from a type of red seaweed commonly grown in Asia. She worked with 3D printing and laser cutting technology to engineer selective patterns on the biotextile to apply the sericin, which would then harden into a glass-like structure that could be used to construct garments from. The ever-evolving physical form of this material in response to the elements, permitted Yang to draw parallels between her work and the constant shifting nature of personal identity, the transience of her biomaterial serving as a metaphor for this sense of personal evolution.

Scarlett Yang, Textile Development

Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang, Textile Development

However, when the final degree show wasn’t able to happen due to the lockdown, Yang took the opportunity to take her sustainable message to new heights, reinventing the wheel by producing all bar one final garment digitally. Working extensively in Cinema 4D, the designer not only crafted an interactive virtual universe within which the collection is worn by avatars, she also made animated visuals that mimicked a 360-degree showroom experience, and photographically documented the dissolution of one physical look at the seaside for her lookbook.

Yang describes her final project as a ‘circular living system’: a body of work that explores the intersection between physical design objects and a virtual/digital experience. She is an expert at engaging the theoretical with the conceptual; in her view these two things do not have to be mutually exclusive. In Yang’s world of work, the physical represents that which is ephemeral, fluid and changing, whilst the digital is synonymous with that which is permanent and enduring.

Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang, Design Development
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang, Digital Development

“Sustainability is always deeply embedded in my mind. There is no other option for us to design new things. I feel that we are already at the point at which sustainability has to be the very, very first thing that we think about as designers.”

Ultimately, Yang’s work aims to communicate the potential of digital media as a possible solution when it comes to issues of sustainability in fashion. Her final collection is about reconciling nature with the extremely manmade, projecting two opposing ideologies onto the human body in the form of fashion. She notes, “Sustainability is always deeply embedded in my mind. There is no other option for us to design new things. I feel that we are already at the point at which sustainability has to be the very, very first thing that we think about as designers.”

Since graduating from her BA at CSM, Yang has been busy collaborating with brands on applying her biomaterials to products. She is also working on launching digital fashion as a commodity, whilst continuing to pursue pure materials academic research. Her enduring fascination with the intersection between the physical and the virtual will remain something that she explores within her design and artistic practice as she moves forward into her career. It is at times such as these that a digital state of mind is proving to be more crucial than ever, and Yang’s work sets an exciting and hopeful precedent for the potential of sustainable design solutions within the fashion industry.

Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system
Scarlett Yang, Lookbook
Scarlett Yang envisions clothes as a circular living system