feyfey Yufei Liu

fey-fey Yufei Liu, born in China, recently lives between New York and London. Her practice understands fashion as a commercial, functional and wearable art, involving performance, story-telling, cultural critique and value generation. She insists for her works, even though it may look unusual, to be functional and comfortable when it is being worn.

Often addressing the interplay between body, symbol, metaphor and daily-life experience, fey-fey usually works with stereotyped fabrics to make seemingly unfashionable clothes but aims to offer the wearers the opportunity to experience ordinary things in a new light. She believes double negation will lead to the positive spirits.

SLOWLY BUT SURELY TAKE UP SPACE o..O ..。ooO

The project started with my investigation of contemporary femininity in what women wear. While men no longer need to imply their social status through their outfit anymore, women are still judged by society based on their clothing. Women often change ourselves, and adjust our behavior to carry the weight of how female bodies are treated in society. A struggle to be respected. With so much burden, contemporary women dress to be elegant, be sexy, be tender, and also dress to be wise, be virtuous, be skilled, be professional, and equally capable to men.

Personally, as an asian woman residing in western countries, I am disturbed by how I always inevitably “choose” to dress up, to be taken seriously by others. I put the “right” clothes on for different occasions. The “proper, professional” clothes make people nicer to me. But I feel smaller; my presence is indifferent; the space has eaten me.

I am tired of being pushed back.

...

The idea is that women not only laugh at jokes but also make the jokes. Humorously playing the tension between “Space” and “female iconography”, I decide to take up space.

I am serious about being unserious.

Being rude to those who are used to be making myself small, it’s about my presence, that makes them step aside. The bigger the clothes inflates, the larger the space I occupy.

It was always my space. But now they are aware that they were in it, and they move aside.

...

Using symbols and metaphors which are commonly connected to females, and also familiar fabrics and prints associated with everyday womenswear, however in an unexpected assembling, I intend to show genuine stories of 100% women: female celebrities, friends, colleagues, myself as well as the “invisible” female labor who make my clothes in the factory.