About
In 2016, SHOWstudio began its collaboration with educator Layla Sailor and her students of Fashion Film at Zhejiang Fashion Institute in Ningbo, China. Continuing SHOWstudio’s longstanding efforts to champion fashion film and emerging fashion filmmakers, SHOWstudio director Nick Knight, designer Gareth Pugh and artist Rei Nadal provided film briefs for the students to follow. The resultant films showcase the students' first encounter with the concepts of fashion in motion and depict a view of fashion removed from an encyclopaedic knowledge and adherence to Western tropes, concentrating instead on the unique materials at their disposal.
Featured alongside the student fashion films is an image-led interview with the students’ professor Layla Sailor, conducted by SHOWstudio Junior Editor Georgina Evans, in which Sailor offers a unique perspective on fashion film education in Communist China.
Accompanying the project is a topical and explorative essay from SHOWstudio Editorial Assistant Lara Johnson-Wheeler. Inspired by the students’ reference to artist Ren Hang, the essay considers the effect 'The Great Firewall of China' has on creativity and self-expression.
Constructed seeks to exhibit the growing medium of fashion film within China whilst examining the faculty to express and create under the restraints that contemporary artists experience on a day-to-day basis in 2017.
