Dulux Ambiance|Flexa Global Launch
Commercial
2024

“IT IS NOT SPRING, UNTIL ALL FLOWERS BLOSSOM” (a quote from Shui Mak Ka, one of the factory workers initializing the 1982 Garment Strike) is a homage to the overlooked and objectified laboring body of Asian Immigrant Women in the western world, with an eye on the garment factory owners and workers within the New York garment production sector as a representation of the US social panorama. With reference to the French philosopher Gaston Bachelars’s topo-analysis theory from his literature work The Poetics of Space — a form of research that examines the intimacy of objects and spaces; the working space itself becomes the representation of one’s identity, cultural behaviour and a kind of consciousness. Thus, this collaborative project aims to explore the poetic relationship between these women factory worker’s invisible social identity, the workspace, movement and fashion in the Chinese diaspora in America, dating from the 1970s to present times. Based on my personal experience growing up as a Chinese immigrant, as well as through my working experience as an Asian fashion designer in the US, I have been closely exposed to the lives and workspaces of Asian immigrant sewers and garment factory workers in the recent years. Aside of undesirable working conditions, unlawful working hours and underpaid rates, their names and workmanship have been rarely credited by the industry nor celebrated designers.