If you ask us what we remember most about school, I think all of us would say: the graduation show!
This show, in terms of the atmosphere and the emotion everyone puts into it, is on par with New York Fashion Week in Bryan Park, except that each graduate of the design department only has to complete one piece, and each major in the department – children’s wear, knitwear, evening gowns, suits, lingerie, etc. – forms a relatively separate show, and it takes four hours a night to put on what Bryan Park takes a week to put on. in one night for four hours to put on what would take a week at Bryan Park. The big difference, of course, is that we don’t have to taste the pressure of sales yet; it’s a total pre-graduation bash.
The school spent a lot of money on this orgy. We were able to get all of the fabric and accessories, and we were able to hire models for each of our students. The money that was sent to us was not only enough to buy all the materials, but also enough to buy the best materials on the market, which was a real treat for us.
The time to finish the work was a month, but it was a month of purgatory for all of us, because most of us didn’t know anything about the industrial process, except for a few students who had done internships or had some work experience during the holidays. The teacher and the external director hired by the teacher (usually a famous designer) started by looking at our sketches, revising, summarizing, revising and summarizing again, conceiving a few color themes that were relatively concentrated in the lingerie program, then helping each of us hand in hand to determine the fabric, guiding us in pattern making, cutting, fitting and sewing until we were finished. By the time all the works were finished, most of our teachers were hoarse and so tired that they could not even speak. Most of the students who were able to finish their work also shed their skins, but unfortunately, there were still those who did not finish even after shedding their skins, or those who had no hope of finishing, so the teacher had to ruthlessly exclude them from the runway show.
This is always the bleakest time of the year for the class, watching them leave in tears and our hearts breaking. The company’s main focus is on the development of a new product, which is a new product. So when the big show finally came, we all felt lucky to have survived, and we wanted to feel even more the joy of being a designer after completing an industrial cycle.
The show is the biggest event of the year at the New York Fashion Institute of Technology, and not only do celebrities from the fashion world come, but some of the most famous people in society also show up. As students, we were each allowed to invite three family members or friends to attend with us. I only had one family member at the time, Mr. Liao, so the other two tickets, one for our good friend Jian Xiao and the other for my old friend Bing Xu, were given to me.
The main reason I asked Xu Bing to come was because he contributed to my graduation design “masterpiece”.
My design is a two-piece nightgown, one in gray satin with an orange ribbon halter dress, and one in gray satin with an orange ribbon robe, both designed with an ink painting decoration.
But I didn’t know how to paint it myself, and I thought of Xu Bing at the time. He is a printmaker, and I called him to ask if he could help me paint an ink painting of plum blossoms. He asked me what I was painting on. I said on silk. He said I should be able to do it. So, one night, after class, I took the subway to Brooklyn with a few pieces of material that I had cut. He had just moved from Soho to Brooklyn and had a new home, and his studio was in the basement of his new home, and when I pulled out the pieces, he took out his brush and mumbled, “What’s so hard about this? I said, “Ugh, I just really can’t.” As he drew on the cloth, he continued to mumble, “It’s just plum blossoms, just draw them as they are.” He gave me a total of six pieces, and I ended up using two of them.
The day I finished it, the New York Times published the news that he had won the MacArthur Prize. I immediately took my shirt and ran to my teacher and said, oh, that’s what the MacArthur Award winner painted for me this year. My teacher said, “Let him come to the show, I want to meet him.”
On the day he came to the show, he wore a black tweed jacket and I wore a shiny velvet shirt, both very solemn. I realized when I looked at the photos that he had the same inky black natural curls back in the day. After the show, he asked me several times, “Where is it? Which one is yours?” I said, “It’s not out yet.” When it came out, he was still asking, “Where is it, is it out yet?” My extreme excitement was immediately dampened. Yes, there was only one piece that I had, and my model walked from the side to the front of the stage and quickly walked back.
However, after the show was over, I was too excited to calm down, so they offered to go for a drink with me. We walked a few blocks and walked into an Italian restaurant. I jumped on my feet the whole way and my heart was still floating when I sat down at the table. After clinking glasses with them, Xu Bing said slowly, “When can we see the whole one with your work?”
I don’t remember if I sobered up quickly, but I remember saying to him like a schoolboy, “I wonder if there will be a day like that.”