Ewha’s College of Art & Design held the 28th Esprit Nouveau: 2021 PREMIER Ewha Fashion Collection from Nov. 23 to 28. PREMIER Ewha Fashion Collection is Ewha’s Fashion Design graduation exhibition that takes place every November at the Ewha Art Center.
Due to the pandemic, this year’s exhibition broadcasted a runway at the ECC via YouTube on Nov. 23 as an opening ceremony. The works are accessible on the exhibition website. In order to enjoy the exhibition on campus, visitors were required to book a ticket on Naver prior to their visit.
This year, 31 seniors majoring in Fashion Design participated in the exhibition under the theme “The Sound of Silence.” Kim Soo-min and Park Sung-won, the co-representatives of the Fashion Design Graduation Committee, elaborated the efforts they put into holding a successful exhibition.
According to Kim and Park, the theme of the Fashion Design graduation exhibition is decided at the beginning of the semester by senior students, professors, and an art directing supervisor. This year, Fashion Design students expressed their urge to create in absolute silence.
For seniors, 2021 is not only their year of graduation but also a step forward to a bigger world. With students’ concentration toward art and the urge to create at its peak, “The Sound of Silence” was chosen as the theme of this year’s exhibition.
Kim spent about two months designing her work “HI, THIS IS ME!” for the graduation exhibition. She had a recurring dream in her childhood, where she rode on her mother’s back and explored a mysterious and strange dream world. Kim remembers the dream vividly to this day and believes that this is because of the dream’s cozy and mystical ambiance.
“After four years of study, I wanted to wrap up my school years by creating a work that is reminiscent of my childhood dreams,” Kim said. “I began designing my clothes using profound color combinations, big textiles, and a huge doll hanging on the back of the clothes to express this.”
Kim hoped the audience of the graduation exhibition could recall their memories of receiving piggybacks from their mothers, reminisce about precious memories, and think about their mother’s love through her design. She also wanted people to view fashion from a new perspective by focusing on the stories behind the clothes.
Like Kim, Park devoted more than two months from sketching to creating her work “Storyteller.” She created a fictitious character who keeps people’s stories in its pockets and travels an unknown world by crossing time and space. It spreads one’s life to another, sharing various emotions such as delight, pain, despair, and relief.
“Because the character moves around time and space with pockets full of other people’s stories, I covered the clothes with pockets of various sizes,” Park said. “Every part of the character is covered with clothes except for its eyes. This is to show that nobody knows who the character is and to intrigue people.” Kim and Park stated that all of the participating seniors fashioned intriguing silhouettes using creative materials and hoped people could feel the students’ creativity and emotions.
As concluding remarks from Kim and Park, they explained that students prepared a video zone and an AR zone to entertain the visitors. The video zone located on the left side of the exhibition played two runway videos that were filmed at ECC. The AR zone on the right showed footages of students preparing for the exhibition.
“There are more to explore other than the fashion exhibition zone,” Kim and Park said. “We hope people enjoy our graduation exhibition at the Ewha Art Center.”