Vancouver Student Designers Debut at New York Fashion Week

New York Fashion Week was an unforgettable experience for the Fashion Mingle team as well as students from Vancouver, Canada’s Green Apple Art Center. Four young designers showcased their apparel designs during New York Fashion Week on a cold, wintery February day, under falling snow on a rooftop in the heart of Soho, with New York’s skyline as its background.

Green Apple Art Center is a Fashion Mingle member who provides their students with an opportunity to create an apparel collection to show at New York Fashion Week. The designers Angelina Liu, Nicole Lu, Lucas Huang, and Viela Hu participated in the Flying Solo fashion show, a fashion retail incubator that presented bold and diverse collections from 87 designers from around the world to a chilled, but enthusiastic audience huddled under heavy coats, hats, and gloves. 

With Flying Solo’s attitude of “the show must go on”, the fourth NYFW season during the worldwide COVID pandemic featured over 400 looks, with the models as the true heroes of this challenging day, strutting fearlessly through the falling snow, posing for the photographers at the end of the runway. Fashion Mingle photographer, Oliver Archer, who shot all 5 Flying Solo shows on this day, was upbeat about his second freezing February rooftop fashion show experience during the pandemic, saying that photographers were staying pretty comfortable with layered thermals and the electric heaters and mylar thermal blankets provided by Flying Solo. 

Students from Vancouver Canada showcase the Vitruvius Collection at NYFW

The extraordinary experience was especially eventful for Green Apple Art Center, who brought four talented designers from Vancouver Canada to participate in NYFW showcasing an impressive, cultural, futuristic, and contemporary look. The school’s goal in participating at NYFW is to help the students boost their confidence and improve their technical design skills. Showing a collection in the snow, undoubtedly a bonus educational opportunity in how to overcome the inevitable challenges every designer face getting their collection onto the runway. The students should feel proud of how they handled this experience and will undoubtedly have a story to tell for the rest of their lives. 

While Angelina Liu dreams of being an astronaut, her New York Fashion Week collection was inspired by the apocalypse. Angelina explores the theme of survival through asymmetrical and unconventional patchworks. She was initially inspired by the famous words of P.T. Barnum: “There’s a sucker born every minute,” alluding to the use of dark humor in her work. Angelina likes filming and playing sports, and always tries to embrace changes in life, which gives her different perspectives in developing her work. She currently attends Crofton House School.

Nicole Lu’s designs were inspired by the traditional clothing of Ancient China and Victorian England and sought to incorporate both the royalty aspect of Victorian nobility and the flow and softness in traditional Hanfu. In her free time, she enjoys drawing, singing, gaming and editing. She currently attends Little Flower Academy in Vancouver, wishing to live in California and study visual art and sciences.

Lucas Huang is a designer who has refined his design process for the past decade, approaching fashion through various lenses of his life drawing in the art studio and his work as a software designer/product manager. Lucas incorporates elements of adventures from the age of exploration and combines them with the modern trends of a young working professional. He draws inspiration from Victorian era explorers who set sail into new lands. 

Viela Hu’s collection was inspired by cyberpunk and chipmunk video game character Jinx. Viela (Yueyi) Hu’s work portrays a modern teenagers’ uncontrollable, dangerous, and rebellious attitude. Viela believes in the importance of experimentation and breaking boundaries. She notes that she thoroughly enjoyed connecting with different design students during this creative process, stating that it has helped her grow as an art student. Viela is currently studying at Crofton House School. In her spare time, she likes to sketch in her art journal, listen to all sorts of eccentric music, and play with her cat.

Flying Solo is a New York based company with a unique and innovative retail business model. It is the largest platform in the U.S for independent designers from all over the world where they can sell and showcase their apparel and accessory collections. All of this collective creativity brings the Flying Solo runway shows alive and has become a “must attend” show during NYFW.

See more of Flying Solo’s New York Fashion Week collections here.