Fashion in Malaysia: Gynn Ling

Chinese, Indian, and Malay, all underneath the same roof. Traditions clash, and identities merge, all coming together to define Malaysian fashion. Based in Kuala Lumpur, Gynn Ling graduated from Raffles University, and has now found her way into fashion merchandising. Still trying to gain more experience, this young fashion graduate is one day hoping to change the way people dress back in her hometown.

Gynn Ling with a collection she made
for L'Aperitif Fashion Competition.

Gynn and I met on Skype for a two-hour conversation. Her microphone didn’t work, so I decided to see her face and read her replies through the chat function. A year has gone by since she graduated in fashion design from Raffles University and settled into a merchandising job. Dressed very casually, Gynn was sitting in her room wearing her red tinted hair up, and a one-shade tank top matched with colourful shorts. She was extremely friendly and enthusiastic, with expressive gestures, quick movements and a cheerful smile, she kept doing OK signs with her hand to let me know she understood.

Can you describe the fashion scene in Malaysia? Her face was serene for a moment and a bit hesitant before she started to answer, “Actually, fashion scene in Malaysia is not as colourful as the other countries, maybe. We kind of have like a group of fashion people, like a community, it's small, but it’s growing. Still, not a lot of Malaysian are really conscious about fashion, they are more into comfort.”

Not being able to talk was a bit frustrating for her, so she paused, and as I saw her laugh, she wrote, “I really want to talk.” Soon after that, conversation spread around the room and she started chatting with her friend about Malaysia’s fashion scene. She kept on explaining through the chat what they were discussing, “we have like local designers, which are Malays, Chinese and other races, our interaction does mix around. Local designers like mixing tradition, classic fabrication, with modern cuts and style.” A main problem for Malaysia seems to be the market, “actually, is kind of hard for us to grow in Malaysia. For the more avant-garde designers, the more conceptual. The Malay designers who base their designs on more classic traditions grow easier. The one’s like Rick Owens or Jill Sander have a more limited market due to my religion and culture.”

Most of Malaysia’s population is Islamic, which means women dress with Hijabs. In that context, it is difficult to have a business unless you sell traditional garments. Even though this seems to be a necessity in the fashion market, I asked Gynn if she got taught at school how to make Batik, a popular dying technique that characterizes Malaysian’s clothes. “Batik, no”, she answered.

Among the limitations that Gynn mentioned, is the hot weather: “we really have limited materials and layers that we can play with.” So, is it a respected profession to be a fashion designer? “They would be impressed by the ‘designer’ position, but mostly they still won't really appreciate the work. Cause still being really brand-conscious, the first priority still goes to the name of the brand and not the designs. There are people that appreciate local upcoming designers, just that the community is still small.”

Malaysian Fashion Week features many young designers who have launched their brands in recent years. Most of the designs look very fresh, commercial and with a European flavour. Islamic fashion has also taken a spot in the runways by having a segment in Fashion Week. It seems that Malaysia’s fashion is being tugged by two sides at the same time: the face that the country wants to portray of their fashion and the reality within their own markets. On the other hand, fashion education has also found a way to spread itself. At least seven fashion schools have opened their doors to teach fashion design in Kuala Lumpur, giving plenty of choice to the design students looking for a degree.

“I love the fashion community here, but not the industry. We have really passionate people in design, art and fashion, everything, but the industry has a really limited platform for them.” Gynn graduated from Raffles University, a school that gives designer enough exposure and encouragement to participate in fashion competitions. Gynn’s graduate collection was called Manimal, inspired in the animal personality that everybody has.

A look from Manimal's collection

For the moment, Gynn chose to work in merchandising because of the stable incomes. How are the job opportunities? “The job opportunities in fashion industry here is quite a lot, but the pay is not that high compare to accounting and other jobs.”  Malaysia’s government is aware of the income that the fashion industry provides. As a result, The Malaysian International Trade and Industry Ministry has been promoting exports, and is looking to step up the development in this sector.

Laughing again with her friend Gynn explained the reason behind her career choice:  “Cause I lived in a small town in Malaysia, I always felt like: why don't anyone dress up nice here?! I want to change the scene here. I would like to see people dressing up nicely and fashionable like in Europe!,” she smiled. At twenty-two Gynn accepts her love for designing, but knows that she needs to learn more and she is not setting up anything of her own, at least not for the time being.

 All pictures courtesy of Gynn Ling

Fashion in Malaysia: Gynn Ling is licensed under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 3.0 Unported License.

Creado a partir de la obra en http://fashion-aroundtheworld.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/fashion-in-malaysia-gynn-ling.html.

Fashion in Bulgaria: Lyubina Stamenova

Contrary to what their established clothing industry may suggest, Bulgaria is actually just starting to emerge onto the global fashion stage. Lyubina recently graduated from the New Bulgarian University with a collection that shows a different approach to the commercial side of Bulgaria. Having also won a scholarship to pursue Fashion Communication in Florence, Lyubina has now left her home country to perfect her fashion skills.

Lyubina Stamenova

The landscape I was getting out of my research of Bulgaria showed that without a doubt a clothing industry existed. However, despite the 9^th Edition of the Sofia Fashion Week and the Bulgarian Fashion Awards, the lack of students with an online portfolio was giving me some trouble finding someone to interview.

Luckily after a while, I found some interesting samurai-style sketches that gave me hope. Lyubina graduated with distinction from her BA and was submitting her graduate collection for a scholarship at IED (European Design Institute). We talked on Skype and I got a glimpse of her face through video, but couldn’t keep up because of the bad Internet connection. So after that, I was only able to hear her loud voice with a strong accent and her charming laugh.

“In Bulgaria it's a little bit different than in Europe or anywhere else because it's too small as a country. Here it's more popular for the fashion industry to be more commercial, so it’s hard for fashion designers to make something unique. It’s hard to build business or make a brand or anything else,” she explained.

The two schools in Bulgaria’s capital are The National Academy of Art and the New Bulgarian University. The latter, where Lyubina studied, is actually not specialized in design since they teach everything from Philosophy to Business. In her seventh semester, Lyubina managed to get into an exchange program in Spain, and interestingly, she found something missing in Bulgarian students: “Desire from the students, you know. Here they go to class like it’s an obligation. In Spain they got to class ahead of time, every time with desire, every time with the laptops, every time prepared.”

Despite having enjoyed her time at school, Lyubina didn’t seem too convinced. “Research, draw and then take the best drawings for outfits,” she explained about the design process. “Yeah it’s not so complicated actually, but we need four years to understand it,” she laughed. Did you ever feel like it wasn’t enough what you were doing? “Yes, this is the reason that I applied for the scholarship. For the basics it’s ok, I didn’t know how to sew, I didn’t know how to create a collection, anything, I knew how to draw nature or something else, I didn’t know how to draw a fashion sketch. They taught me the basics, and now I want to learn more.”

Even though Bulgaria might not come first to our minds as a great clothes manufacturer, it turns out that it produces of a lot of foreign brands. For example, Lyubina interned in ‘Pirin Tex’, a company that creates Hugo Boss suits. This high amount of foreign companies might relate to the lack of jobs only focused on design. Lyubina explained that work opportunities are mostly design jobs mixed with pattern making, but pure design jobs don’t exist. “This is the bad side of the fashion industry in Bulgaria, so if you’re really talented in this you are not able to work because nobody will pay you for this.“

Lyubina's collection 'Transformans'

Bulgarian brands seem to mainly focus on commercial garments or cocktail dresses. Nevertheless, Lyubina pushed this barrier further with her collection called ‘Transformans’, which she patterned and sewed herself. The collection is based on the use of the karate belt. “I practiced in Karate for twelve years, and because of this the garments of kimono are really close to me and I’m connected with this work. I’m really familiar with what happened there, with everything. Actually the inspiration came from the belt, how to tie the belt in the kimono.”

Lyubina seems to have a good future ahead of her, with a Scholarship to study Fashion Communication in Florence. Hoping to have her own brand in the future, she wasn’t able to guarantee that she would return to Bulgaria. Despite her confidence in Bulgarian talent, we didn’t find much to discuss in terms of the good side of fashion in her country. “What I like? Oh I don’t know, it’s complicated.” After pushing for a second answer she said, “everybody can wear different things and nobody can say this is not fashion. This is what I like the most, but I think everywhere is like this.”

All pictures courtesy of Lyubina Stamenova

Fashion in Bulgaria: Lyubina Stamenova is licensed under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 3.0 Unported License.

Creado a partir de la obra en http://fashion-aroundtheworld.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/fashion-in-bulgaria-lyubina-stamenova.html.

Fashion in Cambodia: Eriya Miura

Lift the back of an H&M shirt and you may find a “Made in Cambodia” tag. Does it sound familiar now? This country of contrasts is where conservative traditions meet modern ways, and the richest of the country co-exist with the poorest. Eriya Miura has lived her whole life in Cambodia, and as a recent graduate of Raffles University, she is proudly one of the few Cambodian designers that has studied fashion in her own country.

Eriya Miura by Clay Frame

As some Puma shoes or H&M clothes may indicate, Cambodia holds a great reputation for being textile manufacturers. In fact, it is the country's largest source of employment. Still, finding fashion students or even fashion bloggers to talk to wasn’t easy. It took me a while, but I was finally able to talk to Eriya, occasionally a model, but mostly a fashion designer. She recently graduated from one of the two private schools that teach fashion in Cambodia. At Raffles University she was the only student of the two-year Advanced Diploma on Fashion (I know, I was quite surprised too). Basically she is one of the first generations of Cambodian designers that actually studied in Cambodia, and the first one in her family full of doctors and lawyers. Very excited, Eriya agreed to talk, and she answered all of my questions very openly in the Skype messages, since Internet at her house wasn’t great to talk.

First of all, would it be possible for you to describe the Cambodian fashion scene? “Well, the fashion scene in Cambodia is slowly rising...more youngsters are becoming interested in fashion.” Apparently, Eriya has started to notice that Khmer people – as Cambodian’s are often referred as – care more about what they wear and how they look now than they did before. So, if fashion is emerging, why couldn’t I find any stylish bloggers around there? Not very certain of why either, Eriya took a guess. “Khmer people are really conservative, and sometimes they might feel like they're not important enough to be looked up to, especially in fashion.” 

Eriya interned in Sentosasilk, a Cambodian brand that employs disabled craftsmen and women that are experts in the art of silk weaving. However, the type of buyers that the brand has are mostly from abroad. “They get most of their orders from important people like ambassadors or even the wives of very important people here and of countries in south-east Asia”. So it turns out, that only a few Cambodian people are buying Khmer fashion. Not even Eriya, who ashamedly confessed to me she didn’t have any Cambodian brands in her closet but her own. “I think Cambodian people are still trying to get used to buying clothes made by Cambodian designers. So they tend to buy clothes from overseas with brands from Zara, H&M and Mango to higher-end brands like Prada, Louis Vuitton, Christian Louboutin and Chanel.”

Despite this, it appears that there is a chance for students to work. “We can work in boutiques, or work with merchandising and manufacturing companies. A lot of people from garment manufacturing companies in Cambodia have come to my school to ask if any graduate students are ready to work with them.” It sounds good, but there have been recent strikes in the textile factories because of the low wages. There were even investigations from Puma and H&M, because women in their factories had started to faint. “Yes, that “fainting period”, she said. “It caused a stir here in Cambodia, no one still knows the exact reason why girls in the factories keep fainting. Some say it's because of the hygiene in the factories, some say it's because there's not enough ventilation in there, some even accused the girls of pretending to faint because they wanted attention.”

These controversial circumstances have increased Cambodia’s worldwide recognition as a manufacturing country. But by the looks of it, there are people trying to change this vision of the country. Both F, a Cambodian fashion magazine and the Cambodian Fashion Council are trying to push Khmer fashion forward. Also, for the first time, Cambodia Fashion Week was held last year in the capital Phnom Penh, and Eriya participated with her mini collection ‘Aurum’ that was inspired by the Victorian military uniforms and the Byzantine Empire.

Eriya's collection 'Aurum' 
Photography by Clay Frame

On the other hand, their stunning traditional Cambodian costumes made of silk caught my eye. What has been the biggest inspiration that you’ve taken from Cambodian culture into the things you design? “It's the fabrics. I've noticed how the traditional Cambodian costume has very delicate and beautiful fabrics. To me the choice of fabric is very important, your designs can be outstanding, but if you choose the wrong fabrics for it, the clothes would lose its value.”

In between the beautiful traditional garments and the fast-fashion factories, Cambodia’s fashion scene looks like it is just starting to develop, and Eriya seems quite inspired to change the perception of her country. “Firstly, I would like the rest of the world to see that Cambodian people do have potential to make it in the fashion industry. I want Cambodian people to realize that being a designer isn’t a low-life job. It’s a career that requires a lot of passion, and designers are very well-respected people.” As she’s applying to Parsons now, Eriya is looking to gain all the experience possible so she is able to share that in her own country and help create a change. “I don't only want people to see me as a fashion designer, but also as an artist, a helper and a teacher.” 

All pictures courtesy of Eriya Miura 

Fashion in Cambodia: Eriya Miura is licensed under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 3.0 Unported License.

Creado a partir de la obra en http://fashion-aroundtheworld.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/fashion-in-cambodia-eriya-miura_25.html.