Sweat Campaign 2025

In 2025, I designed a fashion collection of 8 looks titled Sweat for a runway organized by FAST, a fashion club at UCLA. I had the honor of directing a campaign for the collection, featuring 4 key looks in natural and urban settings around campus and Amber Zeng and Saanvi Nandanwar’s photography. Models, in order of appearance: Jasmine Aner, Temi Bakare, Thomas Werner, Jeco Hongarta.

Sweat is inspired by the labor involved in the creation of clothes, specifically my maternal grandma's stories of working in a sweatshop in Hong Kong in the 60s and 70s. Despite her terrible memories of this era, she still continues to make clothes to this day, and her sense of style is forever altered by her time sewing for the British and French. Every artist can relate to the feeling of being exploited and underestimated in their art process, even as we keep going for survival, for love of the craft, or for our nature. Yet, the difference in circumstances is compelling; she sewed to put her brother through medical school, and I sew for recreation as I concurrently pursue a degree in design and media arts. It’s something I wonder if she ever imagined for her grandchildren, and it’s a privilege I keep in mind when love for the craft feels like labor.

This line combines mod retro-futurism with traditional and modern Chinese and Indian elements of my heritage. It's playful, detailed, and colorful–in honor of the sheer courage, imagination, and, of course, sweat, that it takes to build a future for your family.