About Me
INDULGE IN THE WORLD OF CHENLU BAO
I enjoy reading books about philosophy and psychology. When I have time alone, I am constantly thinking about ego and Id. People and people, people and the world. I strive to explain the complexity and profoundness of philosophy and the way I think using fashion. I want people to sprout different thoughts when they look at my work.
I don’t want to live a bland life. I want to find joy and happiness, surprises and much fun. And I want my fashion creations to be a source for such things. I don’t want normalcy or tradition to bind me, but instead express my extraordinary self.
INSPIRATION
MY INITIAL INSPIRATION CAME FROM THE BOOK “GENIUS OR PSYCHOTIC”.
“Genius or Psychotic” is a book written by Chinese author Gao Ming. In the book Ming interviews many ‘abnormal people’ such as psychiatric patients, mentally challenged and other marginalized people, and depict their feelings, worldviews and perspectives on life. I started thinking about normal and abnormal, reality and nothingness.
What is the real world? Is the world we live in same to every person? Or different? Why has the world reflected in our eyes slowly homogenized? Do the people of the world determine the order and reason? Are there not a thousand readers, and therefore a thousand Hamlets (a Chinese proverb 一千个读者就有一千个哈姆雷特) Just because we change the perspective, does that make it an order-less, reason-less world? Visions and hallucinations are not a sickness, but rather a profound and different perspective on life.
MY WORK
PORTFOLIOS
DETAIL
EVERYTHING WE SEE IS JUST A PERSPECITIVE, NOT THE TRUTH.
The main concept of this collection is for one to escape the one-sided perspective on the world and find a multi-angled view on life, along with a new self, a colorful world, and acceptance towards varying perspectives. I first thought of the shape of my garments. From different angles the view of the dress changes. I do this by creating a spiral formation on the dress so there’s an illusion of movement throughout. I used lots of optical illusion. This was influenced by distorted TVs and MRI scans and varying images of light and shadow, reflection and retraction. I wanted to create a 3D world on my 2D print. I did this by photoshopping images that represent normalization. I overlay that on top of still images of holographic films and colorfully distorted images to create and original digital print. The garments are made of polyester and synthetic leather. In certain areas I cut out the leather in ways so the fabric below peaks through, and created a checkerboard pattern with leather and synthetic leather.
"I don't design clothes. I design dreams." - RALPH LAUREN
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