1st Place Winner

Serina is an MA fashion design student focusing on textile design, particularly embroidery and hand-painting. She explores the interplay of fashion and art, inspired by traditional ink painting and calligraphy.

Each piece is a canvas for her paintings and textile art, bridging traditional art forms with fashion design.

Serina’s work is set in a world of garment autonomy, where garments guide their creation, inspired by principles of Web3 and blockchain technology. Her method begins with deconstructing traditional suits, recording their original patterns and reconstructing them along original seam lines.

The garments, adorned with embroidery, hand-paintings, and recycled crystals, merge traditional craftsmanship with an innovative approach to ethical fashion.

In a world where garments possess autonomy, Serina Lee’s design redefines the traditional garment-making process by emphasising the art of embroidery, while drawing inspiration from Web3, blockchain technology and the principles of decentralisation. The core concept of her work revolves around creating a sustainable, transparent approach to fashion, where every stitch and detail is documented, much like blockchain records transactions. By deconstructing a traditional suit to its original pattern and reassembling it without cutting, Serina honours the garment’s history while simultaneously reinventing it. Her design merges the meticulous craftsmanship of embroidery with tailoring and ancient Chinese ink painting—a practice she has honed since the age of seven—establishing a new narrative that intertwines her work in fashion, embroidery and art, propelling these crafts into the future.

The development of the piece is a reflective journey. Extensive experimentation in draping, patterning and textile creation led to an innovative fusion of embroidery techniques and traditional hand-painting with digital tools such as animated embroidery and augmented reality filters. The embroidery in Serina’s design complements and enhances the strokes of her brushwork, creating a harmonious dialogue between the two practices. UV-reactive thread adds subtle depth, turning blue under light to unveil hidden patterns, much like the unseen layers within the fashion industry. The hand-sewn bullion knots directly reflect her brushstrokes, replicating the fluidity and precision of ink painting through delicate embroidery. Each knot and stitch thoughtfully mirrors the movement of the brush, blending traditional craftsmanship with a modern critique of the industry’s impact, while honouring the ancient techniques she integrates into her work.