My current research is structured as a stage-based project, building on my undergraduate project at Parsons School of Design, where I spent four years around fashion design student, trying to observe the system from the inside.
In my school, hundreds of students graduate and aim to become fashion designers each year. But does the industry really need that much designers? We don't know. More importantly, what about other roles within the industry? Most of us focus on design cloth but there is much more to the fashion industry than clothing design alone. In other words, very few of us are trained to think about the system itself. And when you try to step outside the established “fashion design” mindset, you realize there are many overlooked parts of the system that desperately need designers and critical thinkers to engage with.
During the 4 years, I find out many of us don't really consider or even believe in sustainable fashion. One possible reason might be the fashion hegemony . In our education, we internalize dominant industry values.Designers—including myself—are part of the consumer system. We’re influenced by fashion norms during our education, which makes it incredibly difficult to design with any kind of “central awareness.” Meanwhile, we—as consumers—are also “bullied” by this hegemonic system. Our desires, our perceptions of what’s “trendy,” and our behavior are dominated by it. And since designers are also consumers, we end up reinforcing the system we should be challenging as designers.
This realization led to my first-phase project: a life-sized installation (The answer of fashion) shaped like a dress, made from discarded newspapers and printed quotes collected from interviews with fashion design students. It includes different types of overlooked problem of sustainability in fashion design. I displayed it in school at the time when fashion student is exhibiting their thesis design, trying to revealed the deep tension of the fashion design system.
I take the installation as an education structure and rethink how fashion student been effected by their consumer identity, which is my current research. I now focus on secondhand fashion, which is often promoted as sustainable option and sustainable design means In school, such as remake and upcycling. But when we look beyond the classroom, we find that secondhand fashion is being co-opted by the very same hegemonic forces that dominate fast fashion.
The secondhand fashion was originally about affordability and anti-consumerism. But now it’s branded as “eco-conscious,” while still encouraging trend-chasing. Think about how punk culture and worn-out jeans were absorbed and normalized by the industry, they are once anti-fashion symbols. Similarly, we see brands start to taking back control of their archives and secondhand product in the market.
To analyze this shift, I currently use discourse analysis—looking at how platforms and media construct narratives around secondhand fashion. What was once rooted in subculture is now being rebranded to serve the same system and leading overconsumption.
In the process of research, I have a strong experience- Sustainable fashion is a marginalized topic. It remains absent in design education, underdeveloped in consumer practice, and under-explored in academia. In fact, “fashion” itself is not widely acknowledged as a serious subject. I believe many of us who have experience in fashion research have also been asked by somebody, “Do you really think professor will really care about what clothes they wear every day?” And this is exactly our current problem: many people still reduce fashion to surface-level concerns like style, trends, or some pop-up ideas, ignoring its systemic complexity.
What I’m trying to say is, the word “fashion” is a social construction. Before “fashion,” there was only clothing as a basic human need. Fashion wasn’t fashion until symbolic, cultural, and commercial value was added. It is a cultural social norm, not just some pop-up ideas and supply chain management. Today, that system spans across design, labor, media, climate, and consumption. And because it lacks a unified academic framework, it urgently requires interdisciplinary research. The question left to us is how to bridge culture, education, and art with climate.