Xiaonan Li

Xiaonan Li is a womenswear designer from China. During her time at the Royal College of Art, she focused on the integration of womenswear with traditional culture. Her design concept stems from her childhood memory of Suzhou's classical culture. She believes that Chinese young people are deeply dependent on traditional culture, so she focuses on the collision and integration of Chinese and Western cultures. She is committed to incorporating strong personal feelings and interpretation of personality into traditional culture, so as to bring new impressions of traditional cultural elements to people. Her works combine her understanding of Chinese and western romance, thus endowing the costume with implicit romance and passionate girlish feelings.

Chinese elements need new vitality and interpretation. I hope to tell young people that Chinese traditional culture has other possibilities of expression through the re-creation of traditional Chinese elements from my childhood.

My project is Hollow Boundary. Starting from the gardens in Suzhou, China, I studied the relationship between space and human in Chinese aesthetics from the perspective of women.

The Windows in the garden and the holes in the wall become the two-way channels for observation and being observed, as well as the boundary line for women's freedom. The boundaries of women's freedom are reflected both in space and clothing.

I create a new understanding of traditional culture by studying the living space and the change of women's clothing in history.