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Yue Kong’s enviromentally responsible minimalism

Turning avant-garde art into a fashion language

Yue Kong knew he wanted to design clothes way before he could even apply for a fashion degree. “When I was in Junior High School, I used to draw imaginary costumes for my favourite stars. Since then, I developed a strong interest in fashion,” he says. Born and raised in Shanghai, China, it wasn’t hard for him to notice the lack of opportunity there for those who wanted to pursue a fashion career. That led him to apply for a place on the fashion programme at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp.

Fast forward to 2024: with an ever-growing portfolio and a master’s degree, Kong has been working on getting more and more noticed inside the business. Mostly inspired by his daily life, he says, his designs are a combination of past and recent memories. “I try to connect these fragments through the knowledge gained in avant-garde art, and then develop them into a new visual fashion language,” he explains.

Good opportunities came his way after Kong won the Vogue China Fashion Fund Student Programme Award, part of the Vogue Forces of Fashion initiative, last November. During the competition, he created a capsule collection in collaboration with Chinese actor and model Gong Jun for a charity that helps autistic children, secured a co-branded collection with Disney, and was also responsible for a shoe transformation project in partnership with Puma.

However grateful, Kong recognises how those chances tend to be rare for young designers – for him, those opportunities are a shortcut to acquiring visibility and more space inside the industry. The collaborations, he says, have helped him in the metamorphosis of going from a recent graduate to a more mature professional. “I don’t doubt that, whenever I have to face or look for bigger challenges, those experiences will have helped me to become more confident.”

Geometric and innovative silhouettes, as well as the use of bold, vivid colours, stand out in Kong’s designs even with a quick glimpse at his work, but it hasn’t always been this way. In the past, he says, he used to opt for conservative black-and-white tones, to maximise the outline of clothing. Inspired by his time studying and living in Antwerp, Kong was then motivated to try something different.

“The art environment and education system of Antwerp had a very positive influence on my design style. Free and bold expression techniques and strong and unrestrained colours greatly impacted me. I’m very grateful for the five years of study there, which helped me break through myself and find my design language,” he says.

A fire accident that happened in 2022 in Changsha City, China, was Kong’s starting point for his MA graduate collection, named ‘STADTMITTE’ (the German word, which in English translates as ‘city centre,’ is also used to name a railway station placed in the middle of a city). On the occasion, in a matter of minutes, telecommunications company China Telecom’s 42-floor building burned to the ground.

Growing up in Shanghai, a city speckled with skyscrapers of varying styles, Kong says, he used to see those tall buildings as “a synthesis of the wisdom and aesthetics of our modern human civilization.” But after the accident Kong started to question the safety of our contemporary society, which therefore made him wonder: “What would it be like to come back to an Earth that humanity had abandoned thousands of years ago?”

Kong’s research brought him to Brutalism, an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s and 60s after World War II ended. “Characterised by functionalism, minimal geometric lines, and raw materiality without the use of any superfluous ornamentation, the pure expression of the strength and resilience of the lines and the simple geometric composition creates a strong sense of architectural grandeur,” he explains.

Brutalism and its main elements had a clear influence on how Kong constructed the shapes of his garments for the MA collection, creating what he calls ‘the bullet’, ‘the oval’, and the ‘La Tulipe’ silhouettes. The extreme use of concrete and the presence of raw textures, also linked to Brutalist architecture, helped the designer to explore and create different textiles.

Compromised with responsible design, Kong chose to use natural and recycled fabrics as the main materials for his graduate collection. He also crafted some of the pieces by working with wet felting, a ancient zero-waste method where wool fibres are combined until they form a specific shape.

As for the colours, noticeable in most of STADTMITTE’s looks, they were an ode to the artwork of the North American painter Mark Rothko. Kong wanted to mimic the artist’s style of colour expression, which he explains fits well with the minimalist silhouette of Brutalism architecture. “I mixed different colours of wool by using the wet felting process to make the textile look like a colour field painting on a concrete wall,” he says.

Positive about the coming times, Kong sees himself ready to face the fashion industry’s complexity, as well as all its challenges. He advises the new generation of fashion designers to try and be down-to-earth and humble towards every learning process, without rushing to achieve success. Like most of his peers, the fast-paced mindset driven exclusively by economic interests is something Kong would like to change in fashion.

The designer has just finished an internship with Paris-based menswear brand Botter and is now focused on staying in Shanghai – without losing his connection with Antwerp – to complete his one-year mentorship with Disney. For the collaborative project, Kong is developing a collection of nine different looks.

“The environment [in Shanghai] is more familiar to me and will give me more security,” he says. “In the future, I plan to set up my own private fashion design school in my hometown. I want to train more students who cannot go abroad for further study so that they can get higher quality teaching in China,” Kong concludes.