SchoolOf|Interview questions with Feiy.co
LITTLE DESIGN SOLUTION- LU MIN: INTERVIEW
Collection Re:License Achieve of Studio P.I. 2008
1) Can you tell us more about LittleDesignSolution, what is your organization mission?
LittleDesignSolution is an online design education platform offers distance education programs and domestic trainings on all subjects which related to design education, such as techniques, technologies, branding, Marketing, art and sciences, etc.We collaboration with prestige schools, institutes and colleges as well as industry professions and experts around global to tailor make programs for China Market.
Our mission is to help designers and people who passionate about it gain after school knowledges, help growing their businesses and benefit their careers.
The global education system had changes, yet there is less development of online education in design fields especially in Fashion field. What we wanted to achieve is letting more people in China (not limited as Chinese person) having the freedom of learning whatever they want, whenever they have time with and wherever they stay
In recent years, education business has much focused on preparing future designers other than learning real techniques, it also has to do with globalization and transforming domestic manufacture base into oversea production bases. Most of the western educations are no longer fit in to the needs of global market. Marketing redirected student mindsets from learning the business to learning how to design. Many design graduate do not know how to design to fit in the local market with business mindsets or developing their business in a very academically way base on the education which they had in where the education had granted.
What we are developing is trying to help them understand the business faster, develop designs better and reduce the amount of time and product which had wasted from learning experiences. This industry can no longer afford of such a waste anymore.
2) What is your personal background, how did you get passionate fashion and its numerous challenges, and how did it lead you to start Little Design Solution?
I graduated from university in Beijing then took a job as merchandiser to Shenzhen as an undeveloped area 20some years ago, manufacturing 16inch of porceline dolls and exporting them to the US was my daily job. My job following that is working as merchandising manager in Beijing to development small QTY order for Marubeni, a Japanese corporation for three years. Then I applied study design in Florence, Italy in 1996 and transferred to FIT in NYC. In 2002 I got full Scholarship at IFM in Paris for my post-graduation study. Since then I have been in garment industry for more than 20 years of my life and have been working for international brands in multiple locations, Donna Karan black cashmere and Oscar de la Renta in NYC, Givenchy Haute-Couture in Paris and Hugo Boss AG Shanghai office. In 2006 I built my own studio in a 600 SQR meter dumpster ground and established my own brand under the name of Studio P.I. then closed my line of collection in 2016 completely.
Knowing what I really like to do and love to do was when I was in Italy, when I saw and learn the really high quality craftsmanship. And that was the moment I decided to be a maker but not a trader. My dream was to build a brand or a studio like the one in Paris which carries the true spirit of craftsmanship and quality then finally lead to luxury. But the reality was not quite what I imagined in China. In order to survive in this business, we have to find solutions with limited resources which available, and dealing with the unhealthy business condition based on Consignment, as well as higher cost of retail developments. We were happy to get all kinds of supports from companies which had commissioned us for special projects and collaboration, the free works which models and stylists had offered to develop our look books campaigns and shows etc. as well as the support from journalists and editors to bring us in front of the audience, it was a great decade, we had all possibilities to do whatever we wanted to do. Yet there was hard lesson to learn about business models, partnerships of business, loyalty and so on. After the separation of partnership in 2010, I started to develop online platform as a conceptual designer collections shop which accepting digital currencies between 2012-2013. It had to be stopped eventually due to the marketing cost. In 2015, I started an organic diaper and baby wear brand called UD2.0. in 2016, when I saw the pile and pile of second hand garment to fill in 1000sqr meters of space only from one single shop. I decide to stop my career as a designer completely. From then on I started to do consulting works mainly on marketing and branding subject as well as offer solutions to online retailers in major Chinese platforms, such as Taobao, Tmall, and VIP.com. Ever since I came back to China, I have been teaching fashion in major foreign fashion schools in Shanghai, and taking in lots of interns in my studio, what I found the key problem is that designs often has less knowledge of market and consumer demands, what they’ve learnt from colleges seemingly told them how to do it, yet nothing. Inspired by my then Professor and now friend Francesca Sterlacci. I started to develop LittleDesignSolution as an online education platform with full support from Alumni association of IFM and FIT, teaching experts from France, Belgium, Italy, Israel, the US and the UK, Etc.
3) You are trying to create value for autism on the job market through ShoolOf. What is, according to you, the current perception of autism in China?
SchoolOf is a special project which I developed this year. It was originally a sustainable study program which encourage designer back to the roots, learn hand -craftsmanship and applying them to a new concept of up cycling design, it includes three subjects, techniques, design concepts and marketing. With development of this program, I faced lot of challenges, one of the lecture Stephanie quit on her subject after few sections of shooting. Other students targeting to get certificates other than gaining skills. Those are all made me thinking about one simple fact, if education cannot lead a job placement, or provide hands-on skills to a job, it is a failure.
To learn and acknowledge about people with disabilities is really started from this year, people came to me to asking help on design development to help autists (kids and adults). I then learnt the situation of this community. There are 25,000,000 families with member who as autists. Because of the special condition which they are facing, they are suffering from job lost, family issues, and luck of self-developments. Not only just the autists need help, but also their families, by helping their family lifting up living conditions with real job placement what if we can also benefit the circular economy and sustainable development of fashion industry?
Seemingly two unrelated subjects now are coming to one single direction, by seeing it clearly as a completely circle which we creates, SchoolOf is now a real circle to benefit not just the development of sustainable fashion industry, but also the designers to create a brand new career path( name it as the next generation of fashion designer)，and finally we bring the positive impact to help societies in need.
To developing with autists is just a case study of our program. We expecting to develop this concept to a global scale in the end and as satellite bases of people with disabilities, intangible communities and third world undeveloped countries and regions. My experiences on international trade tells me that way could reduce the amount of cost on transportation and the air pollutions costed by transportation in larger scales.
The core of this project is the Human creativities, hand-craftsmanship and design visions. Talking and hiring people to make garment in a traditional way won’t work on this project. And here is what the SchoolOf education coming in. We are now offering free education to those disabled communities.
We had applied for the Zayed prize with this project earlier this year.
4) Recycling is hot trend in the fashion industry right now, but is not the answer to everything. Could you explain us the difference between recycling and upcycling in the fashion industry, and how you are going a step further than recycling?
There is a tendency of labeling on sustainability and circular economy and corporations are tending to control the industry on sustainability development. Some educators are also delivering the massages such as Only if… you will… in terms of business.
My questions are: what if we use 100% of recycled material to produce unwanted subjects as the same speed of using synthetic materials, would that be sustainable? How many of the natural resources will be consumed to develop them? What if we created wastes which are made with recycled materials?
The reason that certain kind of recycled fibers can be populated in fashion industry was because of the quantities have finally reached to the point to cover the cost of development, what if there is no consumerism and the illusion of buying power, would that be possible to have every single technology which we development to recycling materials being applied to mass market production, would that materials be much more expensive and only have few consumers could have afforded them? If those expensive materials which had no potential of marketing, then what is the meaning of development?
There are multilayers of sustainable fashion developments and circular economy. Even I had raised up all questions above, the development of recycled materials and bio textiles are indeed in needs. But before that, it is really a time to layout the architecture of future fashion business in much wider scale of marketing and digitization aspects. I can’t understand why this industry still not yet utilize AI and data to design a real circle of healthy economy in Fashion.
The difference between recycling and upcycling is the remaking on raw materials.
When we recycling materials in fashion industry, we started with sorting, then take the one which still usable to the second hand stores, then the ones which had completely unwanted to burn and became the source of energy, the rest of less than 10% of fashion wastes went to the recycling processes of fibers. Within all these processes, our industry is still creating the water wastes, energy wastes, chemical pollutions and air pollutions. To some degree we reduced the space occupied as landfills, to some degree we still increasing pollutions in other sectors, to my understanding.
Upcycling reduces the amount of fashion objects go into the landfills, creates less pollution via transportations and minimizing the cost of new raw materials (and the new materials can also possibly be replaced by recycled materials). It is a whole new process based on existing objects rather than creating new objects. It requires a transformation of design concept. That is purely based on the level of skills which individual designer had on practical base, the aesthetic of each individuals and the branding mindset when collaborating with other brands. It would also request the collaboration of marketing and planning department of each company. The design method is completely different from whatever design school had taught in traditional way, thus request a full training of transforming knowledges. The more designer know and can do would certainly speed up the transformation and being much more productive.
Upcycling applies to dead stock, off-season inventories and products which had not passed the quality control, it is also apply to good condition second hand and swapping objects. It is a random pattern of design creative practice.
There are lots of potentials to be discovered. We welcome people who are interested in being up cyclist work with us.
5) Second hand materials can sometimes be considered to be of lower quality. How difficult is it to promote upcycled products to the Chinese consumers?
I have been doing upcycling ever since I started with a Brand called RE:license in 2007, there was not even a word of “upcycling” exists, our intension is just simply to help our retail agents to convert their stores into our franchise by up cycling they inventories to matching our brand images and resale them with our price level which was almost 6 times higher than what the object sold originally. The very first collection of Studio P.I. had also an installation on upcycling with Dancing dolls. The ending result was very positive and we both made profits on this brand.
We had also designed special branding and marketing strategy on this brand, the logo itself was commissioned art work which collaborate with local graffiti artist. There are two lines of collection for RE:license one is limited collectable pieces with tracking records on special designed passport, the owner could also trade in their collection with the others or with us. The other one is to mass in a minimum scale with quantities in a lower range of price and gain quick profits.
With the concept of RE:license branding strategy and multiple collaboration works which we have done with Nike and W+K (award winning project), one kilometer runway, Expo 2010 with WWF and art exhibition in Taipei, we had massive media coverage on this brand, thus we have less problems to motivate this brand. As a small form of business, we managed to practice upcycling in a small scale of business, now I would like to modify it and transform it into a medium scale of business and offer consultancy and service working with commercial brands under the project of SchoolOf.
As mentioned above, I must correct that upcycling is mainly not dealing with secondhand materials. And secondhand materials are not necessarily lower quality. The key issue is not the materials but the making. Back to 10 years ago, we had less problems of deconstructing an object, on contract, we had hell a lot hour to work on taking a part a pair of LeBron James to make an all Nike emperor gown. Now the most of time we consumed are not design and reconstructing an item, but to taking apart those badly made seams and uneven pattern cuts.
It is much easier to take apart a higher qualitied garment or a luxury pieces to upcycling them than dealing with cheap labor cost productions. We strongly call up on all brands and designers taking serious on this issue, there are many innovated ways to help you gain profits on multilayer of business in fashion, do not get yourselves in trouble by simply just saving 50 cents or a dollar of labor cost. Be creative in a creative industry.
To the consumer end, Chinese consumers are also having multilayers of behaviors. It is not just China, I think that to global scale, every society has its own viewpoint on upcycled object. If we look at the western world, ever since 2016, the majority designers add in a touch of craftsmanship and upcycling appearance on their collections, yet 90% OF THEM ARE FAKING UP CYCLING. Why, because most of them considering the price which they labeled at their collection pieces are quite luxury, there for they need to provide a kind of service brand new. Then why would the Chinese consumers and or consumers of other county take something which are 100% upcycled? I think there is an easy solution of all concerns. Now that 21 century of technology had made transparency possible, if block chain technology can help tracking records on supply chain, why can’t it track on each of the objects which had used for upcycling? With the authenticity of each object, there will be less difficulties which we had 10 years ago, not to mention this generation of youth and much better education and abroad travel experience, as well as the conveniences of social networking on line. One brand cannot monopolize the entire market, it is a freedom of choice, so as recycling and up cycling, I am quite positive on what we can deliver in this decade in compare to what we can do last decade.
6) In 2007, Studio P.I was featured in That’s Shanghai among “the most influential people in Chinese fashion”. Do you feel a shift toward sustainability happening in the Chinese fashion industry?
I think that the reason we were listed was because of this concept back then. I knew this much later than the time when we were listed. I think there are much more activities happening after we had started it. The key figures such as ReClothing bank, UseDem, and other secondhand online platforms and major influencers within the sustainable fashion circle, and Chinese fashion industry is quite diversifying and became the major center of sustainable fashion practices.
There are also the new faces of swap and sharing activities within Chinese and expatriate communities.
On the other hand, I felt that there are more talks than new improvements are happening since last year, and the faces are most likely the same people with same audiences. The Subjects are most like information sharing bases but not some practical experience which could really help the transformation of local fashion businesses. How to expand the impact with breakthrough technologies is the next challenge of sustainable practice in China.
7) Despite its tragic contribution to global warming, the fashion industry is a pillar of economic development in the South. Do you think projects like yours could take advantage of the momentum and trigger sustainable transitions in developing economies?
We are doing it right now, starting with special communities. With help of my connections from the past when I worked for corporations and companies, we are building it up little by little. I have got full support from international vendors on fabrics and accessories, notions and trims. Even we are up cycling base business, we could still deliver higher quality product. The SchoolOf project is not only create jobs for labors but also create jobs for designers.
We’ve aware of the amount of design graduates available globally each year and the scale of job available to them each year, with the structure of garment industry of the US or Europe, up cycling have less possibilities to be realized, whilst China is in needs of upgrading it fashion industry and dealing with the enormously fashion waste which had created due to consumerism, thus, China is not only that just a center of sustainable manufacturing practices, it would eventually being the center of sustainable design development to designers from all countries.
8) What have been your biggest challenge and achievement so far with LittleDesignSolution?
The biggest challenge is that most of people who I talked with put impossible in front of all subjects, and refused to give it a try and being patient. Some others are also just trying to have some temporarily collaborations for self-motivations. Even most of the time when we talking with people with disabilities, they would eventually think that is too much of Mafan to do so.
We had started our try out with the collaboration of HomeSweetHome and other communities which grouped with people who has disabilities, autists, etc with the donation from Savvy Exchanger. And we are in discussion with more communities as such.
As Mentioned above, we have also gotten full supports from supply chains and will talk with fashion brands on going for this fall.
9) What are your future projects? Any exciting next steps?
I am still developing class subject with European expert for china market. And we are developing the sustainable training classes and acting as consultants to help local brands, but overall it is basically one project with single goal with multiple aspects.
10) Who has been or is a great source of inspiration in your journey, either as a social entrepreneur or just as a responsible citizen? Do you have a book to recommend to our reader?
People like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mother Teresa and Jane Goodall are the most respectable individuals in modern society. But the ones who inspires me the most are my parents. I read Aurelius and listen to Dr. Bruce Lipton lately, quite mainstream. In Chinese, Tao Te Jing is the one for me to keep. The most recent book which I had finished is Fundamentals from Emil Ruder., four lectures of graphic and typography design. It applies to everything of life.
