Today we’d like to introduce you to Songlan Wu.
Songlan, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
To be honest, I am not sure where I am today in any sense; I am 23 years old today, with a new job and living in NYC; this is like the most certain thing about myself so far. Other than that, I don’t know where I may be at or what jobs I may have in months or even a few weeks.
I can start with my origin: I am from Luoyang, a small city (still with big land and population) in China. I came to New York, studied fashion design at Pratt Institute in 2017, and graduated at 2021. Then, I started working in the fashion industry in NYC for a year. During this year, I worked mainly in the technical design field, which gained my knowledge and practical skills in garment construction and material usage. Meanwhile, I kept working on my own designs and textile creations.
Here are the elements about my art: the joy of the hand-making / crafting process, the joy of being able to transfer my feelings and experience (cultures, memories, people, etc.) into something touchable and wearable, the joy of slowing myself and slowing creation itself down.
Last year, I went back to school for a master’s degree in Business cuz I need the knowledge and connection for building my own brand in the future. The location of the campus (Umass Amherst) brought me into a rural space and a simple & slow lifestyle, where I could walk as slowly as I wanted to where I enjoyed smelling the plants and hearing the birds. That was totally different from being in NYC. I also created my “DATA” collection there, with limited but somehow rich resources of materials at hand; I used some idle clothing, flower/leaf as a natural dye, packaging paper, and lots of yarns and free-give-away fabric swatches I collected, plus a bit new purchase on trims, no machines, just pure hand-making. The collection surprised me a lot with its(my) aesthetic and interpretation from the design research. (tho I work in NYC now) Moving my life and work back to a small town became my current goal.
Last month, with luck, with all the effort on my textile art, a modeling company provided me runway stage during NY Fashion Week. That was my first ever show as a designer. I will be in a Recycled Runway later in October in CT, where all the outfits were mainly built up from recycled /up-cycled/ trash materials followed after the show is a one-month exhibition at the host’s museum space, which is my first ever exhibition as a textile artist. The most touching part of this whole event is designers could fundraise for non-profit groups by having audience and connections voting for the designs. I choose to fundraise for Brooklyn @badassanimalrescue; they help rescuing and finding homes for stray or mistreated dogs and cats. Hopefully, I could gather as much help as possible for them.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It is never smooth.
Living in another country far from home, being lonely, being homesick, and being “feeling in between” have been the biggest challenges.
Personality-wise, I push myself a lot to fake “self-confidence” or “being extroverted” in some occasions to achieve running things smoothly. I would also say I am a sensitive person. My art creation needs me to feel things, feel the environment and moods, feel the changes ups and downs, and I indeed have the ability to extremely feel things in detail. This somehow makes me vulnerable and depressed because the ability of “feeling”, “seeing”, “observing”, and “thinking” sometimes leads me into a negative place when I empathize with sad things, animals suffering from climate issues, poverty, wars, homeless, small stalls selling things outdoor in cold or hot weathers, an old person carry heavy luggage walking upstair at a train station and nobody helps, missing dog posters, etc.
Financially wise, studying in art school and universities are just so expensive; I am lucky that my family burdens part of my tuition and living expense. Hopefully, I get to clear the loans in the next couple of years by working hard.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I work in textile art and cut-and-sew clothing designs, including pattern-making, draping, hand-knitting, crochet, and embroidery. My projects have a slow making process since I don’t use any machines, but only hands, e.g., a sweater may take months to knit. I also love using recycled, up-cycled, idle materials; I push a lot to map how to utilize things that are already exist instead of newly purchased /produced and to reduce waste on paper, water, and fibers. Animal leather/fur is a ban in my art (ofc no offense to ones who choose to use). Being sustainable and living-being-friendly have been my goals and standards in creation.
Another feature of my art is that each piece is one-of-a-kind and will be “gone” after a certain time period. When creating my collection Ocean during 2021-2022, I used the pieces made during my undergrad years as a basement, re-design, and re-use to give them a newborn. The same plan will be applied to DATA, in which the materials are widely from the old things I collected, and then these outfits will be turned into new forms and structures in my future project. This operation as well indicates my philosophy on how a project carries and reflects a phase/period of my life; once the old days passed, the looks and appearances (of the outfits and also myself) passed, but the partial matter will maintain and contribute to next phase of my life.
I am proud of my creation and how it gets done. I am proud of that I care about the environment and try to keep the longevity of a piece.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
I don’t have success yet; being happy and accepting all of myself are the success I am on my way to pursuing.
Other than above, what brings me today are:
Being sensitive.
Being kind.
Being confident (even if it could be faked sometimes).
Don’t judge others.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://songlanwu99.wixsite.com/mysite
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/song_l_u_/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/songlanwu/
Image Credits
Xiaopeng Zhan Lauriane
