Lucid Dream

My inspiration for this knitwear collection was from the ancient Chinese literary story "The Peach Blossom Spring", where a fisherman stumbles upon a utopian paradise, free from conflict, pollution, and destruction. However, upon leaving, he can never find his way back to this idyllic place. The Peach Blossom Spring symbolizes a utopia in Chinese literature where one can escape the impurities of reality. Because of my concerns about the pollution and destruction plaguing our natural environment, I seek to capture my own “Peach Blossom Spring” about nature in every stitch, color, and texture of my knitwear collection, just like the fisherman attempting to find that elusive Peach Blossom Spring.

The Peach Blossom Spring is a lucid dream in my mind, it's an otherworldly natural realm. Here, everything can be of different colors, the tree and lake can be purple, casting a dreamlike atmosphere. So, I choose to incorporate blue, purple, and white as they evoke a sense of tranquility and coolness, reflecting the serene atmosphere I experience within my dreamscape.

I just happened to learn to knit when I started making my senior collection. I've found that the variation of knitting allows me to better express the mysterious world of my inner Peach Blossom Spring. The different techniques, tensions, and yarns metaphorize the conflict between the utopia of Peach Blossom Spring and the harsh reality of the natural environment. Another advantage I find in knitting is the ability to recycle materials. I can unravel the knitted yarn and reuse it to create something new. Some of the yarn I use in my designs is repurposed from prototypes.

Although most of the final looks were created using knitting machines, I experimented with various knitting textures in CLO 3D to find the ones that best complemented my collection. Therefore, I utilized lightweight knitted fabrics and chunky knitted fabrics with the Ladder technique. The intricate patterns and hollow effects of these techniques further convey a sense of fragmentation.

Rendered background image sourced from: saria_n_michael