Janice Zhai, CC '25, creates fashion from plastic bag experiments and teddy bear experiences

Upper West Side NY

01 March, 2022

3:04 PM

Description

Columbia Daily Spectator BY LUCIA AUERBACH FEBRUARY 28, 2022 As she strode to the picnic benches in front of Hartley during the middle of midterms, Janice Zhai, CC '25, defied the traditional studying outfit of old sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Her bright red hair contrasted with her large, light blue puffer coat, draped over a dainty black dress, while over her collarbone laid a teddy bear with a black stone. Every detail was intentional. Zhai designs clothing for herself, along with creating collages and pencil drawings, and describes her artistic style as "experimental." Throughout her life, she internalized bits of ingenuity from people, places, and experiences to develop her own art style. Growing up in Hong Kong, Zhai was first exposed to art through dance and teddy bears. Zhai recalls first feeling artistically inspired in preschool. Those early school years inspired the teddy bear necklace that now dangles on her neck. "Every class essentially would have their own theme, and ours was a teddy bear cottage," Zhai said. "We all had table labels that were shaped like teddy bears, and I just thought it was really, really cute." As she matured, Zhai created a tight-knit friend group with fellow dancers, who all bonded over their shared art form in Hong Kong. Her grandmother also taught her how to make qipaos, a traditional Chinese dress, among other knits and fashion accessories. This environment and community inspired Zhai's passion for multidisciplinary creative outlets, which stayed with her as she moved outside of Boston for high school. Whether making qipaos with her grandmother or admiring her high school art teacher's eclectic fashion sense, Zhai understood the importance of simply creating. Zhai's high school French teacher explained the stories attached to the pieces she wore, each coming from a different place. Attentively, Zhai listened: Clothing carried stories. However, Zhai still felt as if she was living in a "bubble." She dreamed of living in a world filled with unmistakable fascination—she would soon find that world in New York City at Columbia. While immersed in the fashion of New York City, Zhai found inspiration for her style in the various classes she took. In her 20th-century art history course, Zhai was inspired by topics such as feminist movements and psychotherapy. "It's just really cool to see how so much art reflects what's going on in the world, especially in the 20th century, when the world at the time was so rife with war and a lot of different political agendas," Zhai said. "The art that most inspires me is the pieces of art that have some sort of message that is relevant to people's lives. … I tried to do that with my designs." Surrealism, as expressed in works like "Le Déjeuner en fourrure" by Méret Oppenheim, showed Zhai the deeper meanings that lay under seemingly abstract and nonsensical art. In Zhai's art, especially her fashion designs, she used this knowledge as a foundation. Symbolism played an equally vital role in her work. It may be teddy bears or the color red, but Zhai believed to her core that what people wear on a day-to-day basis is not casual. "I feel like part of clothes is very much a formative experience with everyone's day, because you obviously want to wear something that makes you feel good," Zhai said. "It makes you feel confident. Otherwise, I don't know. Why would you put something on?" Zhai's pieces are intentional. During the early months of the pandemic, Zhai lacked access to traditional materials, like long spools of red silk or copious amounts of purple buttons. Instead, Zhai and her mother rummaged through their home and gave forgotten objects a new purpose. Using pieces of plastic bags and old placeholders allowed Zhai to transform materials into the fabric for dresses she displayed. Through her work, she hoped to convey the apocalyptic feeling that the rest of the world was experiencing. "Postapocalyptic-core style is trending now, and I'm really into it," Zhai said. "This [shirt] could literally be a T-shirt, but you just cut it up. That's so interesting how that now is seen as so avant-garde or subversive." Collages and sketches take up the majority of Zhai's art productions currently. Without the time to make pieces outside of her art courses and the lack of space and time to paint on campus, Zhai has picked up the art of collaging more intensely than before. In the past, Zhai used her passion for words and literature in her digital and physical design pieces. Believing that "language is beautiful," Zhai found inspiration from stories in different languages. She came to Columbia as a classics major studying Greek and Latin, as well as speaking English, Mandarin, and French. From the Chinese stories and fables her mother would read to her when she was younger to the epic poems and ancient literature she read in her Literature Humanities class, Zhai found herself convinced about the importance of words. In her piece "Untitled," Zhai combined the pieces she made for her friends to model with a solid written narrative. These pieces were an assortment of designs she had created over her senior year of high school. Inspired by her obsession with Taylor Swift's album "Evermore," the lyrical captions beneath the photo encapsulate what she believes to be a similar sentiment: "Words are an easy way to get things across." Zhai found words not just in literature but in music too. Besides Taylor Swift and the Marías' melodies, Zhai consumed the visual aspects that come with music through music videos. She said that the combination of different art forms translates beautifully into the musical realm. "I'm weirdly inspired by a lot of music," Zhai said. "It's really interesting to see how an artist is inclined to visually represent their own music. … It's always really interesting to see what kind of aesthetic an artist ascribes to their own art." In the late afternoon sunlight, Zhai shows off one of her designs to the camera. In the background is a rack of her multicolored clothes. Columbia gave Zhai a creative community that drove her to work on her academics as hard as she worked on her art. Zhai and her friend Cruz Veron, CC '25, used the Pomodoro method—an organizational method that requires alternating working and resting in intervals—one weekend to balance their weekly reading assignments with dying their hair red and blond, respectively. She swapped clothes with her friends who are also incredibly fashion-forward and fell in love with the concept of mixing and matching. She saw the eclectic clothing her classmates wore daily around campus and was always reminded that there are no boundaries in fashion. "Walking on campus, college seems like a fashion show here. Everyone's always fitted up. … Seeing what people like to wear [is] so interesting to me, especially whether it's 'stylish' or not," Zhai said. Being in New York City will give Zhai more inspiration to further develop her designs, she said. She holds on to her teddy bear roots, but has reached new heights in Morningside. Staff writer Lucia Auerbach can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.