Chenghui Zhang

Black Sheep

@Chenghui_zhang

Location

new york / united states

University

parsons school of design

Graduation year

2017

Contact

Chenghui Zhang is a designer who is currently based in New York.

Born in Italy, Zhang moved to China where she grew up before moving to New York to study fashion design at Parsons University, where she was awarded the esteemed CDFA sponsorship prior to her fourth year of study at Parsons.

For Zhang, fashion is a tool and a twist between mainstream culture and subculture. With narration as her main focus in her design philosophy, her design aesthetic focuses on using this tool of storytelling to make the audience understand the story and meaning behind it even more.

Using her grandma’s fabric she brought in 1980s, her thesis collection recreated a memoir of her grandmother by tracing back the development and globalisation of China in the past thirty years through her grandmas’s eyes. The various characters her grandma went through during this time are the focus of her thesis.
Her industry experience includes interning for designers like Ralph Lauren and 3.1 Phillip Lim.

Latest Collection

Remember the forgotten_FW2017_Chenghuizhang

My thesis is tracing back the development and globalization of China in the past 30 years through my grandma's eyes as well as creating an memoir of my grandma. It is an nostalgic path by recreating the different character that she used to be. The historical references are significant toward my design, I want to create an narrative system by using the timeline of my grandma’s life. Growing up in the south part of China, she was a farmer in the 1950s. In the 1960s, she moved to inner mongolia and live as part of villager towards the end of culture revolution In the 1970s, she went back to the city as an factory worker and communist socialist. The four main characters that she went through between 1950s to 1980s are the focus in my thesis. By also using the fabric that she brought in 1980s, my collection is using the combination of traditional fabric and new fabric to build these historical characters along my grandma's memory. Therefore, by recreating these characters, I can visualized her story and the history again in clothes as a way to remember her.

Latest Collection

Remember the forgotten_FW2017_Chenghuizhang

Films