As the music began to play, heads turned towards the hand-dyed, multi-colored silk garments featured on the runway. From flowing gowns to puffy cloud like arms, the designs vary from gradient ruffles sewn onto a white top and pants, to a galactic-inspired skirt with feathers attached it it.

This is the collection of 24-year-old Parsons graduate, Tzu Hsuan Yang. Yang, who graduated in the spring of 2018, had her thesis collection featured in New York Fashion Week. Hailing from the busy streets of Taipei, Yang’s NYFW show was held through Art Hearts Fashion, a platform for designers and artists to showcase their designs.

Yang’s Fall 2019 collection was showcased on Feb. 10, at The Angel Orensanz Center in the Lower East Side. Yang’s entire collection, THY, which is an abbreviation of her name and the Old English term for “your,” was inspired by the concept of lucid dreams. “[Lucid dreaming] means that the dreamer is aware that he or she is inside the dream,” said Yang, “What’s really interesting is that there’s actually some people who train to or were born with have the ability to control their dreams while they’re lucid dreaming. So I’m particularly interested in those kind of people.”

During her design process, Yang sought out lucid dreamers and asked one question: “What’s the first thing you do when you can control the dream?” “They always say ‘Oh, the first thing that they want to do is to fly on the sky. To experience what it’s like to be very intimate, to be close to the sky.’ So that’s why I started to research a lot of images, like the sky colors or when the sun sets, ” said Yang.

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A remarkable aspect of the collection is that everything except for the sewing, which she outsourced, was done by Yang. “Just because I’m dealing with very, very delicate fabric. Like pure silk. So I don’t want to mess it up and then rip it,” she said.

The garments in the THY collection are mainly made out of pure silk. Every color that was chosen to create the design was hand-dyed by Yang herself. Yang would hand-dye her silk by layering water on the fabric and dropping in the colored dye, “It’s like painting a canvas,” she said.  

Yang learned to hand-dye silk on her own, but she believes that if it weren’t for the constant feedback she received from her professors and classmates at Parsons, she would not have been as successful in doing so. “The peers, like your classmates, are definitely a valuable resource. I’m not really afraid of getting negative feedback. I’m actually happy about it,” she said.

Daniel Xu, a creative consultant and close friend of Yang, saw her work through during the design process. “From this collection, I could see her passion, radiating through each look that she created. She’s also a perfectionist, because I’ve seen her suffer and struggle during the process, but in the end she came through,” Xu said.

In between graduation and NYFW, Yang was busy designing and improving her collection while balancing her work as a product development assistant at fashion company, Choosy. When Yang isn’t busy sketching her designs or designing her collection, she likes to listen to music during her leisure time. “When I design I always have to listen to some peaceful music or else I’ll get really panicked, like, “What if I can’t draw a nice design within an hour or so?’”

Yang said that her experience at Parsons had a rocky start. “My time at Parsons started off a bit rough because of how different the culture is from Taiwan to the States,” she said, “I was very nervous to talk in front of people and my English ability was limited too.” Yang believes her classmates at Parsons helped shape her into the designer she is today. “What I learned most through my journey at Parsons would really be through my peers. Of course what you learn in class is valuable, but we have such amazing peers in Parsons from different cultures, different backgrounds, but all so talented,” said Yang “Seeing [others] presenting their work and telling their design story made me grow so much more as a designer.”

Tzu Hsuan Yang’s success after Parsons has led her to be a fashion designer for the fashion brand Vivienne Hu. When asked how NYFW and life after Parsons has changed her, she said, “I feel really happy. I really wanted to make clothes that caters to each woman, like, this is your look, this is it. You feel very confident. You feel really, you know, yourself.”