Yu Lun Eve Lin

Research Project Title: Negotiating an Elite Fashion Design Education: an Autoethnographic Study.

Supervisor(s): Dr Peter Oakley, Professor Rebecca Fortnum, Dr Annouchka Bayley

Yu Lun Eve Lin's research focuses on the dynamic interaction between fashion education and industry seen through the perspective of power and symbolic violence in international fashion design pedagogies. She became a fashion entrepreneur after graduating from Central St. Martins BA and MA 2004–9, selected as Taiwan NewGen Designer in 2011, 2013 and 2014.

She has received the Red Dot design award in 2014 (by publication)and 2018 (by Educational) for her illustration works. She was formerly a design consultant for Asia-based TEXMA Corp. and has taught fashion design in London, Shih Chien in Taipei, FIT in New York and in China. She is the author of Practice of Fashion Drawing, became one of Taiwan’s national textbooks for fashion courses and used throughout Taiwan's vocational high schools. She is also a resident columnist for CACAO art and design online magazine. Eve is currently an institute associate with Decolonising Art Institute at the UAL, a fashion lecturer in Fashion Design and Development (BA) at London College of Fashion.

In this PhD research project, I utilise autobiographical narratives which present my lived experiences as a school pupil, fashion design student, professional designer and academic lecturer. These texts are complemented by library research around key figures and situations relating to the narratives. Fashion education raises issues of power relations and cultural differences in both academic delivery and professional practice. Autoethnography has assisted me in investigating the role of ‘self’ in fashion education at elite institutions and in the fashion industry, offering insights into the experiences of being an Asian student studying art and design at UK universities.

The methods that underpin this research are evocative autoethnography and discourse analysis. I have selected a mixed-method approach as this has enabled me to integrate subjective and objective data in order to examine the key issues that arise for Eastern learners experiencing Western fashion design education. The narratives describe critical moments within industry settings and educational learning in higher education studio contexts in London and Taipei. The inclusion of contextual information, primarily from fashion journalism and educational texts, has helped to contextualise these narratives and relate the personal experiences they contain to wider social frames.

The analysis is built on two key theoretical concepts: Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital and symbolic violence and Foucault’s concept of power. I have utilised binary frameworks: teaching versus learning, professional versus amateur, and success versus failure in order to draw out some initial insights. This examination leads to the consideration of a key question: what do Asian students need from UK fashion education providers? This reflective exercise explores the implications of the initial interrogations of the autoethnographic narratives and demonstrates the wider relevance of these findings. Finally, the study provides some insights and reflections into the role of the pedagogical practice of power within fashion education and the fashion industry and how the cultural differences identified in the study impact on Asian students’ learning in the UK fashion education system.

Keywords: autoethnography, narrative, fashion design, fashion education, power.

The girl who worries about writing_ Letter B

The girl who worries about writing_ Letter D

The girl who worries about writing_ Letter A

The girl who worries about writing_ Letter F

These illustrations were created to express the worries about writing. In a distinctive style, the artworks reflect personal experiences on dyslexia– the struggle to learn the English language and to overcome frustration with writing or spelling. Female figures, trapped in large letters, are beset by graphical patterns growing from their heads. The series effectively points up the difficulties faced by dyslexics when trying to meet their own and society’s expectations.