I want you to feel like a petal

    January 30, 2019 11:18 pm, I found myself standing in the middle of Times Square. Every neon light and massive billboard around that neighborhood was exaggerated into my vein;  just like always, I am still profoundly and proudly in love with the city, but never had I felt like such an outsider like I was feeling.

2019年1月30日晚上11:18，我發現自己站在時代廣場中間。鄰居周圍的每一個霓虹燈和巨大的廣告牌都彷彿在往我的血管裡注射。像往常一樣我仍然深深而自豪地愛上這座城市，但從未像現在這樣感覺過像一個局外人。

I used to find Times Square exhilarating when I was a kid visiting New York: the Disney characters on the street, the Hershey's Store, one fast food restaurant after another and endless fashion brands’ advertisements with beautiful models having fun. Times Square is the representative of capitalist America : everything is about bigger, grander and more colorful. Compared with America in 1957, we own twice as many cars per person, eat out twice as often and enjoy endless commodities like smartphones, big screens, the closet we change twice a year, etc…

 在我小時候訪問紐約時，我常常發現時代廣場令人振奮：街上的迪士尼人，巧克力商店（Hershey's Store），一間間快餐店以及無數時尚品牌的廣告，上面有漂亮的模特兒，看起來她們美好而愉快。時代廣場是資本主義美國的完美代表：一切都更大，更宏偉，更豐富多彩。與1957年的美國相比，我們每人擁有的汽車數量增加了一倍，在外吃飯的頻率增加了一倍，並享受著無盡的商品，例如智能手機，大屏幕，我們每年兩次更換的衣櫥等。

Life dominated by consumerism is all about pace: who is the winning runner of this race of ridicule; who makes the most money or who has the most stuff, and I have seen a lot of these enslaved souls growing up in a drastically developing China. A lot of us only lived up to one goal: anything the “west” has we ought to have it. Fashion is debatably one of the biggest examples of the growing economy in China. Ever since the real estate bubble started growing, we entered this phase of rushing into every fashion store at every part of the world. From Hong Kong to Paris to Milan to New York, you cannot avoid seeing large groups of Chinese tourists buying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stuff that are usually covered with Logos or big brand names. Who cares that you no longer see a piece of clear sky in Beijing anymore? As long as we have these stuff like the westerners, we are perfectly fine. But are we happier? Even if we don’t mention those millions of people who are still struggling in poverty,  for those who can afford these stuff, are we actually happier?

 以消費主義為主導的生活比的是速度：誰是這場可笑生命長跑的勝利者？誰賺錢最多或誰擁有最多的東西，在高速發展的中國長大的我看到了很多被奴役的靈魂。我們很多人只實現一個目標：“西方”世界擁有的一切我們都要擁有。毫無疑問，時尚是成長中的中國最大的例子之一。自房地產泡沫開始增長以來，我們走進世界上每一個角落的時尚商店。從香港到巴黎再到米蘭再到紐約，我們無法避免看到大量的中國遊客購買價值數萬美元的東西，這些東西通常都帶著logo或是明星帶貨的網紅款。誰在乎我們在北京很難再看見一片藍天呢？只要我們像西方人一樣擁有這些東西，我們就是自豪的。但是，我們更快樂嗎？即使我們不提那些仍在貧困中掙扎的數百萬人，對於那些有能力負擔這些東西的人，我們實際上是否更幸福？

    

    

In  Knox College psychologist , Tim Kasser’s  own book, "The High Price of Materialism" (MIT Press, 2002), Kasser describes his and others' research showing that when people organize their lives around extrinsic goals such as product acquisition, they report greater unhappiness in relationships, poorer moods and more psychological problems. The growing greed and desire for stuff put human beings into one catastrophe after another, from pollution to climate change to the simple amount of garbage that we have no idea what to do with, isn’t it time to slow down already?

在諾克斯學院的心理學家蒂姆·卡塞爾（Tim Kasser）自己的著作《物質價格的高昂》（麻省理工學院出版社，2002年）中，卡塞爾描述了他和其他人的研究，這些研究表明，當人們圍繞諸如購買產品之類的物質主義目標來組織生活時，他們會感到不滿周圍的人際關係，會有較差的情緒和更多的心理問題上。貪婪和對物質的渴望不斷加劇，從污染到氣候變化再到我們不知道該怎麼辦的簡單垃圾，人類陷入了一場場災難，是時候放慢腳步了嗎？

  Slow fashion is more than just bringing the 52-season per year fast fashion fiasco back to the two-season norm. It is about an attitude on we don’t always have to be the front runner in life when it comes to grades, money and stuff because those aren’t the measures of happiness. Slow fashion means enjoying the simple small luxuries in life that usually involves good designs and craftsmanship like a perfectly tailored French seam that falls beautifully onto our bodies, a fresh bouquet of roses that we got from the farmers market or a simple glass of refreshing moscato after our long work hours. 
 Slow fashion不僅僅是將每年52季的快速時尚亂象帶回兩個季節的標準。slow fashion是關於一種態度，即在成績，金錢和物慾，我們不一定總是在生活中處於領先地位，因為這些都不是幸福的衡量標準。慢速時尚意味著享受生活中通常簡單的小奢侈，這些奢侈通常有著精美的設計和工藝，例如完美地剪裁的法式縫線（完美地落在我們身上），我們從農貿市場購得的新鮮玫瑰花束或在長久的工作事件後一小杯清爽的莫斯卡托。

          

          

We need to consume things for our own true pleasure not for our vanity, and as a designer, I would like to design for women who appreciate quality just as much as I do. Just like the article “3 Designers Creating Clothes for Life — Not the Runway”  has described, “There’s a certain type of woman who is always dressed in something stylish but not fashionable, expensive but never ostentatious, exquisite yet hard to place: some thoughtful, meticulously cut piece of clothing that channels the contemporary moment while remaining aloof to trends.”  To me those are the women who inspire me the most and will always motivate me to make beautiful things for. 

  我們需要為自己的真正樂趣而不是為了虛榮而消費東西，而作為設計師，我想為像我一樣欣賞品質的女性設計。就像文章“ 3位設計師為生活創造衣服-並非跑道”描述的那樣，“有一種類型的女人總是穿著有品味但不時髦，昂貴但從來沒有誇張，精緻卻難以定義：一些精心的剪裁的現代卻不完全跟隨快速轉變的潮流。 在我看來，那些是啟發我最多，並將始終激勵我為之創造美好事物的女性。

         

         

How femininity is being portrayed has always inspired me, for those who identified as women, we have been battling with the standard of perfection since the day we started existing. It is not until recently did I realize that imperfection would not wreck me; the obsessive desire for perfection would, and that only when I embrace my "weakest" vulnerability would I be the strongest. My designs are the story-telling aspects of exploring my vulnerability as a 21st century women, that includes broken hearts to not feel beautiful, from misogynistic comments to childhood insecurities… I wish my vulnerabilities can make seemingly mature women of all races and sizes feel stronger, even with the softest silk and the most delicate prints. 

描繪女性氣質的方式一直激勵著我，對於自認為是女性的人，自我們存在之日起，我們就一直在追求完美的標準。直到最近，我才意識到不完美不會毀了我， 追求完美的痴迷慾望會。只有當我擁抱自己的最軟弱的特點，我才能變得最堅強。我的設計是我作為21世紀女性，對自身軟弱性的探討，其中包括心碎，對自己外貌的不滿，厭惡女性的評論到童年的不安全感……我希望我的脆弱性可以使看似成熟的不同種族和尺碼的女性感到更堅強，即使是用最柔軟的絲綢和最精緻的印花。

    I want her to fall asleep in my slip dress with or without a partner by her side feeling like the most beautiful princess; I want her to pair  that dress with a nicely tailored blazer and a belt so she can storm down the street feeling like the most powerful queen; I want her to feel like a petal, in her most individual and organic shape, resistantly blossoming in the seemingly dark and dangerous nights,  while there’s always going to be another beautiful sunrise, by the water when she walks on the deck of the ferry , by her vibrantly beating heart.

   我希望她在我的滑裙中入睡，無論有沒有伴侶，她都覺得自己是最美麗的公主。 我要她把那件裙子配上精心剪裁的西裝外套和皮帶走向街頭，她是最強壯的女王。 我希望她感覺像花瓣，以她最獨特和有機的美感，在看似黑暗和危險的夜晚開花，而當她在渡輪甲板上行走時，在水邊總會有另一個美麗的日出，永遠留在她激情跳動的內心裡。 

 

Bibliography 

“Consumerism and Its Discontents.” Monitor on Psychology. American Psychological Association. Accessed February 2, 2020. https://www.apa.org/monitor/jun04/discontents.

Fortini, Amanda. “3 Designers Creating Clothes for Life - Not the Runway.” The New York Times. The New York Times, November 15, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/t-magazine/slow-fashion-designers-casey-casey-egg-sofie-dhoore.html.