Momo Wang——Craftsmanship for Happiness(2)

Byebye, Central Saint Martin's

Y:What's the most impressive thing happened during your three years at CSM?

M: I didn't take the foundation course, so I was less competitive than my classmates. During the first year I couldn't to anything. I didn't know how to use the library to do research, and my sketchbook just looked like a disaster. So I failed with first two projects. Teachers in CSM are very strict. The only respond you could get when you explained to them was 'Who cares.' So I was very depressed by that time, even thought that maybe I should just quite and go home. But I didn't give up eventually. During the summer vocation I stayed in London, gave myself a plan for reading and study. I came to the library everyday, drew a sketch everyday and study about other people's work, preparing for the project of the next term.
Then the first project of the next term was the shirt project. I already got an idea when others didn't know what was going on. It's like the early bird catches the worm. The project went on smoothly from the very begining. Teachers and classmates all witnessed my changing. I started to feel involved and learned a lot with my classmates. And by the end of the project I was the second runner in my class. My tutor gave me lots of encouragement and positive feedback, which made me much confident than ever. After my graduation show I stayed to say thank you to all my tutors. When I told the tutor of the shirt project about it he was very surprised. 'Oh, really! Did that help? Thanks for telling me. It's good to know.' Yes, if you didn't tell someone, then he would never know how thankful you felt about him and the truth that how important a simple encouragement could change a person's life.

Y: That's so touching. What's your next plan after the collection?

M: Many people said to me that I got a fame. But I don't think so. I'm not an ambitious person. I never thought about owning a brand or wining big awards. The collection was finished by me and my mother on our dinner table. I don't have any intership experienment. If you sent me to some big companies and ask me to do some collections, or research on the trends and markets, it's impossible for me. I still have lots to learn and to practise. And that's why people think my collection is fresh. I want to keep the freshness so I'm a bit reluctant to get into the industry so early.

Y: Then what do you want to do next?

M: I want to go back to China. I want to go to some remote areas to learn the folk art and craftsmanship of the minority ethnic in China. We have 56 different races in China and they all have their special craftsmanship, some of which are going to disapear from the world if nobody is going to carry on. I want to learn it, recreate it with my fashion and introduce it to more people. It's a long-term plan, 5 years at least. But I'm not in a rush. I'd like to confirm every step and make sure that I'm doing what I really want to do.

Y: Is your family supportive to your next plan?

M: Yes, of course. You see my mom is helping me with my work in London. And my dad is a ceramics artist. Those porcelain on my final collection was made by him. In the future I want to do some fashion-related fine art stuff, like some installation about fashion. And my dad said he could help me with the material and space. He's a mature and traditional artist, and he's also my teacher and my inspiration.

Y: That's great! By the end I want to ask a question that I'm always curious about. When did you strongly feel that you want to do fashion for the rest of your life?

M: Well, that's before I was born I guess. It's destiny. My mom wrote a letter to her twins sister when she was pregnant, saying that 'If it's a he, I want him to be an architect. If it's a she, I want her to be a fashion designer.' My mom likes to make clothes. She made my clothes from my childhood to highschool. My hometown is not a big city. People don't know what is fashion. I have the sense of fashion, and I read magazines on the internet. My dressing were always critisized by the teacher. But all my friends liked my style and they also thought I should be a fashion designer. Even though, my parents still wanted me to take the normal education. They sent me to high school and then I went to study arts history in college. But I always have the idea that I want to make clothes.
In college I got freedom in time and finance. I rent a very small basement near school and bought a 500-yuan (about 50 pounds) sewing machine. That's how I started. At first I made some shopping bags for my friends. They liked them very much. Then I began to make t-shirts, then trousers, one by one. They were just some pieces of cloth, but I just enjoyed making them and seeing people wearing them. My clothes is not the 'cool' stuff. But people wearing them are really feeling happy and satisfied. And that's my happiness as well.

Momo Wang——Craftsmanship for Happiness（1）

In the summer of 2011, the Chinese designer Momo Wang walked on the runway of the graduation show of Central Saint Martin's College. Compared to other tall and slim models, her 'mini' models with balloons in their hands looked so happy and so different. The young girl, who came from a small town in the north-east China, got the second runner-up award and soon became the most eye-catching designer in her country. Many people said she's going to be BIG and have her own label. But Momo said: I'm nothing but a craftsman. Like other boys and girls who love handmaking, she's still the simple Momo, who just likes making lovely stuff and gets a great sense of achiements by seeing people wearing her clothes.
We had our interview at CSM CharingX. The building has been sold to the bookstore next to it. Next term everything's going to be changed and all the students and teachers are moving to the new building at King's Cross. Sitting in the Room 406, we started our talk from the school that has witnessed the history of London fashion.
(Y:Yoanna, M:Momo)

The Happy Ending

Y: Let's start with the question that many people who have seen your final collection would be interested in. You are a fashion prints student. But why there's so many knitwear in the collection?

M:I've tried almost all the techniques in prints during the first and second year of my study. As a fashion designer I think I must cover as many aspects as possible. So I was thinking maybe I should give myself some challenges in my final collection, to combine prints with knitting, and to be more competitive than other students. I have many friends who study knitting and I've leant a lot from them. I learned knitting and crochet by myself. So in the final collection you can see many prints that are presented by knitting. It's a comprehensive present of my ability.

Y: Have you ever done any internship as the other students?

M:No. Generally speaking, we can take one or two years off to do some internship. But as soon as I realised that the building was going to 'disapear', I decided that I would graduate in 2011 and be the last year of students graduated from CSM at Charing X. I'm very emotional. I won't feel like I'm not ready. If it's the time then I must do the thing.
Y: Your collection is very, very different from the other students' work. Where did you get the inspiration? What made you to produce such a happy and fresh collection?
M: It's very ramdom actually. Last summer I was help one of my senior with her final collection. She made me realise that if I took one year off then when I was back there's going to be nothing in this building. Everybody was talking about our moving to King's Cross, but nobody had ever seen the building in such a mess and things were changing in the next year.  So the building and our prints room on the second floor are where my inspiration come. I want to build a connection between my final collection and my memory here at CSM.
Y: So is it the feeling of a happy ending you want to develop in the final collection?

M:Yes, a happy ending. You've seen the balloons. The idea is very simple: I wish the balloons could fly and bring the building at Charing X to King's Cross. Don't abandon it. Don't build a new one. Just take the old one with its story and fly to King's Cross together. Our school is located in the very central of London, which is a very expensive area. We understand it and we know there's nothing we can do with it. But it's sad to see the building with so many stories and memories of those designers disapeared and became a bookstore. So I wish the balloons could take our school to King's Cross with us, happily.

You see the first look. I picked the samples of the worsk of all the prints students from the 1930s to now, and sewed them on the skirt, like a bird's feather. The little girl is the building. She flies away with the memory in the building and in our prints room. When I'm old and look back to the collection, everything is still fresh and specific. I'm not very good at taking inspiration from abstract stuff. I love the natural and original thing. Many designers may focus more in contemporary art, but I love to go to the zoo, to the parks. My inspirations are all from my real life, and I realize them by hand.

Y: What's it look like at the very begining? Is there any important change in the final collection?
M:Yes, I can show you my sketch book. It's very different with the result. At the begining I made many specific prints, like brushes and paint cans. But then I found them too weak to support a whole collection. So I gave up a lot of them. I posted a Weibo (the Chinese Twitter) at that time, saying that: Momo Wang, this is not your last collection, but the first collection in your life! Many ideas can be realized in the future, but by then I had to decide on what to keep and what to give up. To focus on one concept and concentrate the 5 looks together and give a powerful feeling to people. That's the problems that every designer will face with.

There are many things that can support my collection in our prints room. My 30 classmates come from 18 different countries. Sometimes they just came to the studio in their own costume. Everybody can bring some inspiration to each other. So I take some elements from folk art, Russian culture and African totem into my collection.

Family, Teacher & Friends

Y: I met your mother at the day of your line-up. Did she and your family help you with the collection?
M:I went back to China and spent 10 days at home during the final, because there's too much handmaking and I couldn't finish it by myself. You know women like our mothers and aunts, they all know how to do knitting. So I told them what color and pattern I want, and they just helped me with the knitting. Sometimes my grandpa would come and check our process. My whole family was involved in my collection. So when I showed them the pictures of me getting the price, they were very surprised and said: We are on the international stage! I come from Jinzhou, a very small town in the north-east of China, where nobody barely knows anything about fashion. So when I asked them to help me they were very confused about what we were making. Does it look good? Can people really wear it? But they would listen to me explaining about it and later they started to accept this kind of edgy stuff and even changed their dressing style. I'm very happy to see that my whole family has become fashionable because of me.

Y: What's your relation with the tutors? What suggestion they'd given you?

M: My tutors like my personal style very much. So they told me not to do looks that fitted the average model. They wanted me to produce a collection like 5 looks of myself. To make the clothes that I want to wear. My difference with other designers is that I'm not professional. I mean, I've never done any internship, so I won't consider too much about trends and the market. I just search my own closet and make things that I like. And as for the propotion, my clothes is very different as well. Because I'm tiny and my models are tiny, my looks are all short at the top but long at the bottom. So my models all looks good in propotion, just like those 'giant' models.

Y: Well for the models, are they your friends? You seem to work very closely together.

M: Yes, some are my friends and some of them are my friends' friend. My tutor also introduced me some models and we even had a casting.  We've become very close friends after the final show. It's a very unique experience for all of us. They are very happy because they are all tiny people, who've never thought they could be models one day, and even walked on the runway for such a serious show.