MIRRORMASQUE COLLECTION BY LILIA YIP

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Fri, 2012-08-31 15:33

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Lilia Yip is a Singaporean designer based in Brighton, UK. She graduated from the Royal College of Art MA Fashion Womenswear in 2008, and started her label in 2010. Lilia designs for the intelligent woman who has an inquisitive mind, a big heart and a sense of humour.

She balances the wearable, the surreal and the conceptual, always ready to challenge pre-conceived notions of what fashion should be in a quiet way. In 2011, she was selected by the British Council to show a collection as a UK guest designer at the Look of Style Awards in the Philippines.

Lilia is also a fashion lecturer at the University of Brighton.

Her new collection is entitled: MirrorMasque. In Chinese, the word freedom is written 自由 (zi you) . 自 meaning the self and 由 meaning the ability to be. How do we understand freedom, what does it mean to us? The collection explores the relationship between masks, freedom and hair.

"I observe, experience and am affected by what is happening around me and to me. The collection began with the surreal film, MirrorMask, by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean about a girl who feels trapped in her life with a circus and longs to escape. In the year I was working on the collection, many significant events happened around the world. People fighting for, protesting and being persecuted in search of freedom and their ideals. I wonder what freedom means to most of us and whether we take such a basic human right for granted until confronted with the opposite."

"The collection is about my questioning what freedom to means to me historically as well as within contemporary society. I am interested in what feelings and thoughts are aroused by the wearer who wear the words “freedom” on their body. When I do the same, I feel different, empowered but more fragile, as if I am revealing something deep within me to the world. I wonder how this feeling changes with each person’s own perception of freedom. How can freedom and its opposite be expressed in a garment?"