PRESENTED BY LULU KNOWS
WORDS BY ILIA SDRALLI
When fashion becomes art it becomes a door to the unexpected and experiential. Often connected with the celebration of life in all of its aspects, conceptual design offers a glimpse of eternal beauty and bloom.
Melbourne-based and Malaysian-born, Icelynne Yeo is a Chinese fashion designer with a distinctive passion for the unique and a creative eye for the rare and unusual. A recent graduate from RMIT University Melbourne, Yeo often gathers creative inspiration from her personal life and the momentous events that have defined her being. Pursuing various approaches throughout the years, she experiments with 3D techniques and sustainable design—harmoniously merging them together in her final and most evocative work: “The Beauty in Death”. The project challenges the conventional perception of death and decay—a call to treat death as a creative force and a beautiful end to a wonderful journey. In Yeo’s universe, there is no life without death and no death without life. They coexist in harmony—a belief that has become the foundation of her most recent collection.
“The Beauty in Death” is a project that exhibits the exquisite nature of both death and decay. Can you share more detail about this collection?
This is my graduate collection and it explores the admiration of an unconventional idea of death, the beauty in the un-beautiful. This can be seen in my latest collection where I emphasized my designs on the recent loss of my grandfather. The concept behind the process of decay that occurs when a human dies can be seen and emphasized throughout my collection. The motivation behind this project is very personal as it stems from my experience of losing a family member. The death of my grandfather has brought all my family members closer together, and for that, they pushed aside all of their differences and problems by highlighting what is really important in life, whilst showing compassion, care, and desire to support each other. This experience made me realize how natural human death is and how it can bring people together to celebrate his special last day.
As a designer exploring 3D printing, how do you see the connection between fashion and technology?
To further complement my collection, I collaborated with Andres Rivera, who is an expert in 3D printing. The incorporation of technology into my collection was due to my inspiration towards the advancement of human technology in delaying or even escaping death in many ways.
Talk to us about your use of color.
The whole collection is based on death and life co-existing with one another. I decided to use red to represent life and black as a symbol of death. The red represents the flesh and blood of the living body, which depicts life. The black represents the decaying and rotting of the body when the human dies.
Do you believe fashion has a way of evoking emotion? What has been your personal experience with this idea?
Throughout this collection I wanted to challenge everyone’s perception of death, to treat death not only as something that is somber, but to treat it with bravery and compassion, to accept death as part of a beautiful end to a wonderful journey. As I believe, without death there is no life and without life, there is no death.
