Mingxin Sun

When we watch TIKTOK videos, we often see bloggers making videos that show how they lost weight. In China, even the news that female stars are getting fat has attracted 1.65 million people’s attention on TIKTOK. Unfortunately, even if we escape from social media, obese people usually suffer from painful words from others in life, no matter whether these are in good or bad faith. It can be seen from these phenomena that in China, the majority of people still think that thinness is the standard of beauty. The above issues inspired Mingxin’s original intention to start the INFINITY project: the purpose of this project is to create a commercial accessories brand for plus-size girls, and to help them pursue their unique beauty, and at the same time, to challenge the view that thinness is the only standard of beauty. 

This series of work is mainly inspired by the difficulty that Mingxin has encountered with clothes. The vest that she never dared to wear in summer, the button that is always tight to the neck on the neckline and the jeans which have no elastic at all. She reinvented them to make them suitable for people of whatever shape. Pearls are widely used in this series – a common material in jewellery design, it is actually just a small foreign body that is poured into the oyster. Due to the protective mechanism of the oyster itself, the small foreign body is wrapped in layers of nacre, so that the insignificant small foreign body turns into a big pearl. The preciousness of pearls increases as their size increases. This story is consistent with what Mingxin wants to express, that thinness is not the only standard of beauty: in this project, bigger is better. 

According to surveys, plus-size people like to wear dark clothes, because larger people habitually cover up their obesity to conform to society's standards of beauty. Mingxin’s series of work is entirely in white, in order to encourage plus-size people to show their bodies confidently and consistently pursue their beauty in life, rather than being restricted by their size.