Today we’d like to introduce you to Yuanyuan Liang.
Hi Yuanyuan, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Born and brewed in Shanghai, China, an International Metropolis. I grew up surrounded by art, design and fashion. I am always in love with clothes. Wonder about the fabrics and clothing history. I always believed that clothing should be an extension of self. And that’s when I took matters to my heart. At the age of 18, I chose fashion design as my college major. Attended Chinese Ministry of Education Double First Class Discipline University DONGHUA university. From there, I started working at the largest television company in China: Shanghai Media Group. My works have been seen in the largest and most popular TV shows, TV series, and commercials in China. Many of my shows have been ranking Top 1 nationwide in audience rating. And have had millions of viewers on SMG Youtube Channel. I have worked with actors from Mr. Bean – Rowan Sebastian Atkinson to Wendie Malick, artists from Marshmello to COIN(pop band). I also owned a couture store in Shanghai China, focusing on wardrobe design and made clothing for private clients. Because of these experiences, I learnt another word: Costume Designer. I realized how much fashion design and costume design are involved with each other. Costume is the reflection of a character’s life experience. But no matter what time period this costume comes from, it is always related to fashion from that time period. Costume addresses a character’s background: Rich or poor. Vintage, contemporary or from the future. However, you must understand each time period’s fashion in order to design a look for the character.
In 2016, I came to the United States for my grad school California Institute Of The Arts(CalArts) to study costume design. CalArts costume design program has been ranked Top 10 costume design program in the world by Hollywood Reporter. From there, I started my journey in America.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Life isn’t always rainbow and unicorns when you move all the way from the other side of earth to start a brand new life. Ever since I moved to America, I have faced many challenges. The language barrier. Embrace the new culture and environment. Make new friends. Endless assignment. Not to mention the pandemic…I had lots of reflections of how life was before I moved to Los Angeles before I walked out of my comfort zone. I missed it but I know I would still choose this journey if I can choose again. Going through the challenges ever since I’ve been to LA without the support and love from my family and friends makes me realize how much I was loved. It brings me so much closer to my family. To study at an A list grad school and living in a city filled with art also makes me realize how lucky I am to be in an environment that allows an artist to grow without limit. There are so many design forms to absorb in the industry here. And how humble and supportive every professional I met, no matter how successful they already are. I see my goals to achieve as a designer and artist. I’m motivated every day by what I learn and see. I work very hard because I don’t want to disappoint the people who give me so much trust in my art/work, allow me to be as creative as I can and support me unconditionally.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a costume designer and wardrobe stylist for film theater and commercials. I am very proud of my career. As a costume designer, we are the person who creates the looks that will help the audience to have the first clue of what world they are seeing, what time period is this story, who these people are, and build the excitement to make the audience look forward to what’s going to happen in the rest of story.
The keywords of my career are love and trust. I love my work. My passion for art, design and character is that nutrition boosts my energy to forget about the tiredness even if I work 12 hours a day on the film set, even if the tension is high, I can always work calmly. I love the people I work with. I believe the law of conservation of energy, what you receive is what you give away. To treat everyone with love is my recipe for work. In a high-pressure working environment, I chose to trust my instinct in my design, I chose to trust the costume team I selected to work with and trust every colleague from director, actor to production PA.
I recently wrapped my costume design for Amazon Prime TV Series Mayberry Man. My other most recent works including: The world premiere of Trouble The Water at The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum. Tiger Style at TheatreSquared-The Walton Family Foundation. Series of commercials for State of Survival and Warpath (Mobile Games). Wardrobe design for Polygroup commercials. My significant accomplishments in Costume Design include: My film The Bee was screening and showcasing at COMIC-CON International 2022 in San Diego. The Bee won Best Costume by Action On Film MEGAFEST. I designed and built costumes for AFI Directing fellow Niko Ren’s film The Monkey King. The Monkey King was nominated Best Narrative Film at STUDENT ACADEMY AWARD 2021. I was selected by the Walt Disney Imagineering Blue Sky Project as Concept Artist to brainstorm for Disney’s future Theme Parks. I designed costumes for the largest immersive theater Attack The Future at Shanghai’s iconic landmark: Paramount Theater. Currently, Attack The Future is ranked number 1 at the box office in China. Since 2008, I have designed and built costumes for over 80 variety shows/TV Series for the largest television company in China: Shanghai Media Group(SMG). In 2018, I designed and built costumes for the immersive show Nightwalk at The Huntington Library in Los Angeles. Nightwalk was sold out for every performance and the production received rave reviews from national media. Due to Nightwalk’s success, The Huntington Library invited me to design costumes for The Huntington’s 100th Anniversary Gala.
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Normally as a costume designer, I will start my work with our director and costume team. We will go over the script together to analyze each character and the relationship between them, as well as the facts of the story, including: The season and time of the story. The historical fact of the story. The color palette the director and cinematographer want to establish in the story. The world we want our audience to visualize.
Then I will start researching, sketches, plan the budget and reach out to the fabric vendors. Costume design is a very collaborative job. For a production to run smoothly, I must work in tandem not only with writers and producers but also production designer, sound designer, lighting designer, hair and makeup artists and the rest of the production team toward a singular vision yet maintain their unique perspectives and expertise when crafting how characters — whether fictionalized or based on real-life figures — dress and live authentically.
For example, recalling the World Premiere of Trouble The Water I did this summer for Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum. While I only had 1 set customer, and one wardrobe supervisor. I pulled, buy and build more than 300 costumes for 23 casts for fittings. Each cast plays 2-5 characters. The story happened from the year 1817, ends up at the year 1869, which required historical costume research over the 52 years gap, the costume design for different ages of each character, the transition and quick change between one actor’s different characters were also challenging. As well as pulling together at least 60 key looks for production’s marketing headshots. This requires tremendous work and a strong teamwork. I often did my own research, pulled and bought costumes by myself and had my costume team to build the costumes, set up the dressing room, set up the fitting schedule with cast and stage managers. Then we will start fitting, taking photos and marking photos of each actor’s look by scene, so we can establish the looks with the director through emails. Some actors play 5 characters and have more than 2 looks for each character. Some main actors only play 1 character but play from age of 18 to the age of 49, for this kind of costume fitting, it might take 1 day to just fit one character. And it often took 1-2 hours for my costume team to set up the dressing room for one fitting.
After fitting, we will have rehearsals, this is the time our costumes go through the challenge of stage safety, actor’s powerful movements and timing quick change, collaborating with lights and set. Director will develop lots of notes for me to either cut some costumes or choose the costumes from the options. As soon as our director establishes the look, my team will start tagging the costumes that we are keeping, alter the ones that need to adjust, notify our cast for their established looks, dry cleaning and returning the non-keeping costumes. Then we will start organizing the costumes by scene and character again. Finally, I will make a costume bible for our stage managers and costume PA. So they can have a sense of each actor’s looks.
This is how I usually collaborate with productions. It can be complicated and challenging lots of times. But since I love it, it brings me lots of joy and fills my heart with hope and excitement.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.yuanyuanliang.com/
Image Credits
Picture from Yuan Yuan Liang
