SINCE 2015, Kittie Yiyi’s eponymous label has been about an exaggerated kitschy movement, one that maintains critical aloofness. The excessive garishness is not for everyone, but her niche fans have allowed the designer to thrive.
Wearing Kittie Yiyi immediately puts you on the pedestal of attention. In a sea of minimalist and no-frills garments, you’ll stand out and in the distance, heads turn and eyes sneak a peek. Your coolness by way of the beautiful, fluid silhouettes, echoes self-defiance but also creates fashion envy.
Her work manifests in the details while saccharine colour schemes balance out the total silhouette among the graphic motifs and loud prints. The melange of idiosyncratic design language remains in a constant shift of tension and ease, subverted by her artistic amplitude for an impersonal and personal character that mirrors her experiences in the youth cultural epoch.
There is power in pride and identity but there is also vulnerability. She is admired for her dare-to-subvert attitude and confidence but there is a shift in life that comes with age. And with age, the unshakable teen spirit is continuously being put to the test, like the designer herself, at the tip of transforming her penchant for exuberant kitsch to something more extreme... or sublime.
She says: “The brand embodies a cheerful, spirited and effervescent image that some may even call naive and childish. However, as I grow past my teens and alongside the brand, it has put me at the crossroads; I feel compelled into a transitioning phase where I have to grow into an unknown future. There may come a day when this quirky oddity of aesthetics filled with vim and vigour, may take a turn for the worse, spiralling into something disruptive.”
Kittie Yiyi is Kittie Yiyi. There isn’t anyone quite like her. She questions the perceptions of youth culture and the stigma that comes with it. She describes youth today as curious, carefree and fearless by nature, but that fearlessness comes with an easy change of heart, easily distracted by technological advances.
Social media, for instance, has shaped how we view and portray ourselves today. As systematic as social media functions, feeding its way into our newsfeed, it collides with fashion and, in turn, accelerates fashion for the worse. Fashion knows no boundaries and it certainly knows no patience. Its craving for instant gratification also means it’s never in it for the long run.
“I’m on Instagram to stay aware of cultural and fashion trends, for reference and nothing more; these trends exist for us to react to or blindly follow. If I don’t know better, I’d probably be thrown off course and succumb to them. It is when we’re so deep in it that we start to blend in and that is when we become bland,” she says.
To understand Kittie’s creative vision, is to understand the behaviour of what sets youth in motion. It isn’t restricted by the stereotypical rebel and naive attitude in an idealistic world, nor the compliant and practical qualities in the realistic world.
However, like every in-real-life subculture, today’s youth is a reaction against the social circumstances of the past and what was unacceptable of the time. The freedom and liberty felt by the generations before has been completely overwritten by the progressives and radicals, such as in the hands of Kittie Yiyi.
She says of her creative process: “What’s frightening to me is that the creative process in a repetitious cycle appears quite vicious. At times it feels as if nothing good comes out of it. We’re always working around the clock and rushing for deadlines. Passion and patience are really put to the test, creating self-doubt and even a sense of failure, but if we pull through the hardships, we’ll eventually see the fruit of our labour.”
In her collections, she extends the metaphors of her inspirations. The label has never explicitly defined femininity by the textbook, though some of the conventional basics look like they can challenge gender conformity. In the Autumn/Winter 2016 collection, she launched her first menswear which started an exciting chapter of discovery for men.
Her Spring/Summer 2020 collection “Spring Harvest” explores the perfect and imperfection of fruit with ruffled up silhouettes that resemble the extension of fruit anatomy and tie-dyed effects representing different aspects of the harvest.
