Mengqi Xue

As a person born in the post-90s in China who has had some contact with oversea cultures, I realize that many people from my generation have had similar experiences to my own. They are involved in diverse, complex, and delicate contexts of conflicts between the East and the West, between individualism and collectivism, between patriotism and oversea education, and there are many more. 

When I am in China, my parents and friends around me sometimes tell me that I am not too Chinese. Over the years that I’ve been studying in London, I often felt that I did not belong in Western culture either. So most of the time I feel that I am in the middle, without truly belonging anywhere. 

My dress aims to convey the growth and vitality of an identity, a continuous process of being trapped in a certain moment of seeking “the self”, an awkward middle zone, a unique integration of time, memory, and identity. It has the quality of a semi-finished product that has not been developed completely and has not been finished. But precisely because of this, it also gains a kind of rebellious, subtle, and fresh power.