Fab 40: Ying Gao Fashion, Montreal

Canada

Fashion designer and university professor Ying Gao decided while she was completing a master’s in Interactive media that she had enough of being told 'designing is pointless.'

'To work in the fashion industry, all you seemed to need to know was how to copy. I pondered a great deal on the role of the fashion designer, and I wanted to do what a designer was supposed to do – to create and innovate,' she says.

Gao has since taken to perfecting a precise yet almost Lilliputian design style through the concept of 'modulatable' clothing, designing pieces that invisibly integrate microelectronic technology with fashion design. Technology is just as much a source of inspiration as Montreal – 'I love this city' muses Gao.

It seems the city feels the same way about her, with the mayor of Montreal having awarded her the Phyllis-Lambert Design Montreal grant earlier this year. Gao’s latest offering is ‘post-vernissage’, a limited edition collection of conceptual garments made with fine materials and featuring the subtle ‘modulatable’ characteristics that are bound to be Gao’s trademark for years to come.

www.post-vernissage.com

20 October 2009 | Fashion