Zhang Da is a fashion designer. Inspired by traditional Chinese techniques, he is also interested in the contemporary wear-and-throw-away culture. Zhang Da was born in 1970, and lives and works in Shanghai and Beijing.
Three questions to Zhang Da
Caroline Elgh, Assistant Curator: China is moving forwards in many ways, and this seems to be on the agenda for a lot of people in Sweden as well as in other European countries. When I think of how fast China has changed to become an important part of globalisation I want to ask you, how do you as a fashion designer get involved and drawn into the country’s economical and social changes? How does it affect your work and the company that you run?
Zhang Da: China is indeed going through transformation at a rapid pace. The changes and development from the eighties is the basis that allowed me to become a fashion designer. It was in the mid-eighties that China started its first professional fashion design course in the university. In the late nineties, a few self-designed fashion lines started appearing in large Chinese cities. It was under these conditions that I entered the fashion industry to work at the end of the nineties. In 2005, I opened my own design studio in Shanghai to create and sell my own ladies’ wear. After more than 20 years of economic progress, it is no longer an exception for most consumers to purchase mid to high-priced goods in the larger cities. This also meant that individual designers like me saw more possibilities in relying on the sales of smaller stocks as a means of survival. The advent of the Internet as well as more than 20 years of a more open policy allowed for more freedom of information in terms of fashion, as well as cultivated many consumers. They have gradually developed more demands in terms of the differentiation of goods. This has also proven to be beneficial for designers who seek to provide a variety of different goods. You could say that economic progress has made the fashion industry a real possibility, and also created the conditions for a possible livelihood in this field for independent designers. I have also managed to find my own working method from this, to design products that I am personally interested in.
The most direct influences that the economy and an improvement in people’s living standards have, would be on food and clothes. (Right now, it has also affected aspects such as housing, cars, education and travel.) As such, these have a huge impact on the industry that I am in, just as I mentioned earlier.
During the Cultural Revolution, the disparity between everyone’s wealth was very small. Now, people have started to segregate into different consumer groups. It affects me insofar as it directs me towards whom I am designing for, or who would be attracted to my designs. Hence, within this massive crowd, I have to consider that my products can only suit a small group of people, especially since the pace of change in fashion is very fast. In China things change at a rapid pace and can be very severely compressed. This also has a significant impact on fashion designers. New products can be considered old in half a year. As such, one must always consider what will invariably change and what will not within the fashion industry.
External changes will always bring about advantages and disadvantages to the company. However, regardless of what these external changes are, the basic principle of the company’s operation is this: the company’s size and structure must serve as a positive aid and support to the design of new products.
Caroline Elgh: From where do you take your starting point and what inspires you as a designer? Is it other designers or perhaps other creators like film makers, artists and musicians or something completely different?
The starting point of me being a designer would be when I entered university to study fashion design.
Before I started university, I’d already had a great interest in drawing. At that time, I had a more fervent passion for art, more so than for design and fashion. Art and artists have a huge influence on me. After I’d entered university, a number of fantastic designers also had a major influence on me.
Caroline Elgh: What is your driving force? Is it important to make a change?
My driving force in design has always been how one can express one’s knowledge, understanding, view and attitude of others and the world at large, and from all of this, how one can realise one’s own worth.
It is of utmost importance that we have the ability and courage to make changes when we need to do so.