Between Paper and Real Life

The Combine’s brutalist, industrial interior has a way of elevating all fashion, whether it’s recycled streetwear or runway-ready ensembles, and Lisa Jiang’s showcase, Moments in Motion, was no exception. For one week, The Combine was draped in a mesmerizing selection of Jiang’s designs and conceptual illustrations— pieces that would look as fitting in the pages of a dystopian manga as they would in Vogue. 

You may have seen Lisa’s kinetic fashion before— in bridal inspiration boards or in music videos featuring Yo Yo Ma. This exhibition gave visitors a rare peek behind the flowing veils of silk organza, revealing both a unique creative process, and an intimate look at the finished product. Yet, you might ask yourself: can a dress designed for constant, organic movement ever be truly finished?  

“Being in fashion was, for me, a way to make a career out of art.” 

In the hours before the launch night, Lisa sat down with us to discuss how she evokes strange new worlds through wearable art, the things she learned (and didn’t learn) from fashion school, and her hopes for hosting her first-ever fashion illustration workshop right here at The Combine.  

The first thing we learn about Lisa is that, while dressmaking pays the bills, she’s not only, or even primarily, a fashion designer.  

LISA: The art that I did before I got into fashion was very, like, 2-D: illustrations, paintings. In fashion, you have to think much more in 3-D and go back and forth between paper and real life. Fashion design has opened more doors, I think, as a course of study. There were two clear paths to get into fashion school. One was a styling path: i.e., clothes and fashion in that sense. And then, there’s the artist’s path. There’s a convergence between them. But you can usually see, from how people design, which side they came from.  

I like to think of myself as an artist first, and a fashion designer second. I got into design at university. But art was always there. And being in fashion was, for me, a way to make a career out of art. 

Despite her early and obvious talent, Lisa faced typical doubts about the career prospects of fashion design— especially from her parents, both first-generation immigrants and career scientists. Convincing them wasn’t a matter of words but action: she proved her relentless work ethic with hard evidence. 

“Not only the static images of fluids, but also the way they evolve is what I’ve tried to get at with my design.” 

LISA: I guess it started when I was five years old. My sister and I have always been into art, and our parents encouraged that. They sent us to Chinese school first, and then to a drawing class straight after. I feel like when you're five, all you need is someone to be like, “Yeah, you're doing great”. When I was 16, I had a project that was a really big mural. It took weeks and weeks of work. My parents saw that I was dedicated: ‘She works hard enough at this. She can make a career out of it.’ I was thinking, even at 16, that I could always go into illustration with a fashion design degree. But not the other way around.  

Soft-spoken, but brimming with enthusiasm when discussing her favorites, Jiang sometimes punctuates her precise answers, with 3 quick claps in the air. Her smiling eyes reveal the fierce determination of someone who’s seen her wildest dreams come to life by her own handiwork. Yet woven into that vision is a sharp pragmatism about the realities of working and living as a creative. After all, how much can fashion school really prepare someone for a career like Lisa’s? 

LISA: Maybe it was just my university, but they encouraged a lot of creativity and concept design… Then, you actually go out and try to build your own brand and— you know— find clients, write invoices, and file taxes. And none of that is taught. I don’t think it’s unteachable. But it’s not taught. So you just have to kind of figure out the whole side of making the brand work. 

And, being raised by scientists— how did that play into making her the artist she is today? 

LISA: The aesthetics of biology, I've always loved. A lot of the project's inspiration is from the science of fluid dynamics. And “Moments in Motion” refers to “moments”, in physics: The rotational effect of a force on a body about a fixed point. In particular, Von Kármán vortices, which are when a flow of water or air hits a blunt object, creating beautiful ripples— are something you see in cloud formations. Not only the static images of fluids but also the way they evolve is what I’ve tried to get at with my design.  

As the name suggests, Moments in Motion invites you to stop and contemplate movement from a fresh perspective. The front wall of The Combine featured never-before-seen hand drawings by Jiang, tracing the evolution of one of her signature pieces.  

Just before the launch opening, Jiang could be seen whisking around the space, making final tweaks— particularly to a motor-powered centerpiece programmed to breathe even more life into the dress. 

LISA: The first version of the dress I did by myself at university. I talked to a few professors to check the very basic circuitry, and physics behind it all and make sure there was enough power. Tension is what drives a lot of the movement, like the right play of fabric tension when the motors are in motion. But on my first attempt, the effect was too unpredictable, and sometimes the fabric would get tangled. So, the updated version is done with my partner, Timothy Boll, and that one's coded properly.  

But Lisa’s faithfulness to the motion of molecules under physical laws is only part of what makes her art meaningful. Rather, the heart of her design ethic is in how movement is embodied and experienced on the human scale.  

People are often like, ‘Where are you from?’ And I'm like… Hmm… Do you want the short or the long answer?  

LISA: The new red dresses are a development based on The Arrival by Shaun Tan. It’s a beautiful book, that is wordless, and illustrated with extremely intricate pencil drawings. I love it because it's a picture book, but it's definitely adult in the storytelling. It doesn't attempt to make itself for children in any way, and I think that’s kind of rare. Actually, can I show you?  

Lisa whips out her phone to the website of illustrator, Shaun Tan. The first thing that stands out is how, cosmetically, they look nothing like Lisa’s artwork. But it’s the emotional resonance of the pages that lingers in the conversation from that point on.  

LISA: It’s about an immigrant who immigrates to a fictional land. You start off in a fairly recognizable world and then you end up in a strange fairy-tale land. And that inspired me as well. I'm a second-generation immigrant. My mom and dad moved from China before my sister and I were born. We started off in Australia and moved to England at nine and, later, I came to Toronto for work.  

But the weird thing is, every time we would move, from Australia to England or from England to Toronto, the weirdness for me was how similar it all was, even though you're on the other side of the planet. The grass is the same. The trees are the same. But the feeling is different.  

I find borderlines a bit weird. Because of how much I travel, it's nice to feel more like not just a citizen of one country— and also have a dual passport. So, often, people are like, ‘Where are you from?’ And I'm like… Hmm… Do you want the short or the long answer? (And they also look at my face and I think they’re expecting an ‘Asian’ response). 

So the idea of finding all these weird-looking vegetables, creatures, and plants visually represents the strangeness you feel when you move to a different country, and that unfamiliarity inspired those dresses.  

They're basically these weird creatures from his book— that signify to you that you're in a new and strange world. And then, towards the end of the book, he kind of settles in and becomes familiar with these vegetables, he's like cutting them up and making food out of them and being a bit more settled in his home and he brings his family.  

The night of the exhibition drew a vibrant crowd, from fashion entrepreneurs and Combine regulars, to close friends of the artist. Guest were invited to explore Moments in Motion through their own perspectives, letting their gaze follow the natural rhythms of Lisa’s unique visual voice. On display, a book of Lisa’s concept art showed how her fine, flowing gowns arise from loose line drawings. Alongside mannequins, you would have seen a live model showcasing one of Lisa’s signature looks, creating show stopping photo ops all evening.

The week following the exhibition, Lisa decided to host a fashion illustration workshop, offering attendees a hands-on exploration of her creative process. Whether you were passionate about fashion design, art for its own sake, or considered yourself completely uncreative, Lisa invited everyone to tap their own inspirations to express them in line, form, and color.  

“You select the right fabric, and let it do what it wants, basically.” 

LISA: Sometimes I feel like fashion illustration is an excuse for me to draw people, which is maybe why I put a lot of emphasis on the faces. Even if you go into fine art, these days, it’s very abstract. The fact that, in fashion design, they still care about craftsmanship is something I really enjoy.  

Adding a workshop as part of the exhibition schedule was a nice way to build the community around The Combine. I even considered doing a workshop all-around fashion kinetics. But I think fashion illustration made more sense because it's more accessible. One thing I’m really excited about is our workshop has a life-drawing model as well, which is not something that you can do very often.  

Lisa shared that a lot of live experimentation goes into her fashion illustration. Often, between the initial creative vision and final outputs, the designs take on a life of their own, evolving in unexpected ways that can surprise and delight even the designer.

LISA: In one collection I made, I had six looks planned. In the end, the illustration I liked the least ended up being the physical design that I liked the most. In the design phase, there is a lot of back and forth between paper, draping, and fabric and back to stitching and back and forth.” 

I think the thing with illustration is: You’ll sometimes do like, dozens of exactly the same illustration, before you’re finally like, “Ah, this is the one with the right line and the right flow.” If the illustration is going wrong and you try to force it right again, it won’t work. And it’s the same with draping: You can’t make the fabric do something it doesn’t want to do— you can tell that you’re forcing it. So you select the right fabric, and let it do what it wants, basically.  

Like her dresses or the fluid dynamics that inspire them, Lisa is in a process of constant evolution. We asked the young designer, who has already earned a robust following in fashion and art spaces for her distinctive style: what’s next?  

LISA: In terms of building a brand, I’m still figuring out what I’m trying to say. I think the style that I have downstairs (at The Combine) has maybe gone on long enough— because it's been years now. But I feel like that red dress is one of the best versions of the concept I’ve made.  

I think, to be perfectly honest, as a designer, you can feel this pressure to make a cohesive Instagram grid and stuff like that— and that if you change too fast it's a bit jarring; Clients see your work, and they reach out because of the stuff they’ve already seen. But I don’t think what’s on display right now is my last statement.  

One thing I would like to design for is a concert. I think that would be a very cool stage for moving garments. Yeah, it's very cheesy, but I would like Lady Gaga to wear one. I feel like that would be fun. She’s an experimenter. 

For clients, I think I’ll be making looks inspired by fluid-dynamics for a long time. But for my own development, I do still want to do explore motion— to start from the bare bones of nature— like maybe it's spiders, maybe it’s snakes? Fluid dynamics is one inspiration. But there’s so many other things we could do.

Lisa’s artwork and designs can be seen at www.lisajiang.co.uk/