61. TIANAN DING: A SPACE BETWEEN PROPS AND PROPER.
ALA ‘New story Intro 02: Office chair customised with ALA new material’. February 2024. Image courtesy of ALA.
‘I don’t have a grand yet to pull up a fashion show, the only thing I am chasing right now is being 100% honest with myself and my work. Every material I used and the techniques I chose are for a reason.’ T.D.
Your specificity with materials really fascinates me, you see things that others don't, and you see the opportunity and the language within the invisible and the overlooked - the resulting works are raw and yet refined at the same time and ultimately very modern as they reflect so much of today...
ALA TIANAN is a streetwear concept - it is a playful, critical experiment on clothes’ fabrication, cost, and function – inspired by the controversial issues of value and affordability in fashion.
In this new story "Tiny Room" (presented February 2024 - London), I tried to bring the pleather’s “value” back, especially the cracking, peeling, and unwanted pleather.
“Tiny Room” depicts a generation of transient kids leaving their hometown, finding self-acceptance and friendship. This is the story that happens in my community. I also dig into the story of people while exploring the property of pleather as a fabrication.
Pleather is a cheap “street” material that kind of stands for fast fashion, It gets criticized a lot because it is almost non-recyclable and it peels easily after long use. You can also see it on the motorbike, moped seats, or on the dumped sofa. My take on that is fixing the peeling, cracking bits, and transferring them to engraved patterns.
In the suburb area of my hometown, you can spot a lot of small town teenagers wearing pleather jackets, and they are so proud of owning them. I can relate to it a lot - not everyone can afford brand-new leather clothes, I think a good piece of clothing doesn’t value by how expensive its fabric is.
As an artist you are incredibly fluent with your visual communication - I really feel that your contribution to culture will be felt in the future when we look back at this time - how would you define your creative process in terms of objectives?
Thank you so much Joe for this comment!
To be honest, my last 3 collections, are all based on stories I have been through, I don’t have a grand yet to pull up a fashion show, the only thing I am chasing right now is being 100% honest with myself and my work. Every material I used and the techniques I chose are for a reason.
That’s also why I don’t think I am a fashion brand yet - I still create for myself and my friends, it is our story told in the language of clothes & fashion.
I will be moving forward and growing up - but I will be forever proud of these stories I created so far.
ALA ‘Black version kitchen towel jacket partly burnt & dissolved - knit section by Elaine Lip.’ July 2020. Image courtesy of ALA.
ALA ‘Engraved pleather body, lambskin arms.’ April 2024. Image courtesy of ALA.
The silhouette of the pieces you create are also very specific, in terms of form and the way garments fall off the body, again there is this reluctance within the shape that feels heightened because of the materials you develop and use, can you discuss what you feel you want to say with silhouette within your work as a whole?
I was trained as a menswear designer back when I was 19. To skill the menswear design and pattern cutting quickly, I have been working hard on military clothes, sportswear, and tech wear knowledge.
This time I am trying to find my “flow” in all these hardcore, streetwear types of garments, I do most of the pattern cutting and draping myself, and I am trying to gradually peel off my thought pattern of “uniform, armed, protected menswear”. I used some dress fabric, particularly Chinese silk, to see what a fabrication’s context could bring to a stereotypical streetwear and menswear image.
I remember visiting you at your desk as a student, it was mountainous with material tests and little iterative discoveries of magic - always so inspiring and clever, and funny! Always with that specific combination of a certain nostalgia without being retrospective, the Frank Ocean-ness and also something ferrel and yet so sophisticated. What do you remember from that time?
I love the word “Frank Ocean-ness”! I would describe my last few months in school as “ Frank-Oceany” too.
It was a bit sad at that moment as we know later we were all forced to leave because of the pandemic, but I am surprised that I finished the idea of using toilet paper to do leather-like garments. It presented during such an insecure & confusing moment in such a positive way, it also kind of perfectly matches the pandemic situation - people been panic-buying toilet rolls. The disposable has never been so precious.
I still appreciate that experience as it turns me into the designer I am right now.
M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN), Issue 1: Art Direction: Tianan Ding, Photographer: Lijuan Liu, Model: Xiaoyi Liu. September 2020.
Thank you again and again for those pictures that you made with Lijuan Liu and Xiaoyi Liu for the first issue of the magazine - as soon as the pictures came in, I knew that the eye had to be the cover!
It was a very special co-working experience - as everything was executed during the first lockdown 2020. We were only able to communicate through phone and video Zoom calls for the prep and art direction. We couldn’t get access to make big props or get a proper shooting studio, so we just made use of what we had.
We did the shooting in my flat at the end and I uber-ed the photographer Lijuan and model Xiaoyi to my place - during the shooting, Lijuan and I were using a thin glossy film, which is my graduation collection scraps - to layer the textures and shadows on Xiaoyi’s face. We soon found out the whole image was way cleaner than we thought - so we randomly splashed some spray paint over the film. We also did the test reprinting on kitchen paper, which is also part of my graduation collection techniques.
ALA ‘How much I love about the reflective’. February 2024. Image courtesy of ALA.