APUJAN Autumn/Winter 2020 ‘The Cloud-Making Factory’

We are liv­ing in the world where vir­tu­al and real coexist

The theme of every sea­son by APUJAN is inspired by lit­er­a­ture, and asso­ci­at­ed with chaot­ic time­lines and imag­i­na­tions with­in par­al­lel worlds. Through dif­fer­ent top­ics and imag­i­na­tion of vir­tu­al worlds, APUJAN cre­ates a unique world­view by inter­lac­ing dif­fer­ent time­lines. In the sea­son of Autumn/Winter 2020, APUJAN brings anoth­er whim­si­cal chap­ter “The Cloud-Mak­ing Fac­to­ry” to Lon­don Fash­ion Week, using ele­ments such as fan­tas­tic fac­to­ries, gears, chim­neys, robots and islands, to trans­port his audi­ence to the places where clouds, stars and moons are created.

There are many books that inspire the sto­ry of this sea­son, such as “Tents in the Clouds” by Mon­i­ca Jack­son and Eliz­a­beth Stark, “The Cloudspotter’s Guide: The Sci­ence, His­to­ry, and Cul­ture of Clouds” by Gavin Pre­tor-Pin­ney, “Sto­ries of Your Life and Oth­ers” by Ted Chi­ang and “The Paper Man­agerie and Oth­er Sto­ries” by Ken Liu.

In this imag­i­nary world, all the won­der­ful things are from the same ori­gin, where vast arrays of machines oper­ate to cre­ate clouds and the star­ry sky. There are ptero­dactyls, space­ships, and antique expe­di­tion air­craft trav­el­ling among the clouds. Below them are the chim­neys of the cloud-mak­ing fac­to­ry, where gears, con­vey­or belts, and islands float between the black, white and blue sky.

This is an imag­i­nary world behind the imag­i­nary world, an imag­i­nary word behind the island B of Juras­sic Park. This is a glimpse of the sto­ry­book through the acci­den­tal split. In the print­ed pat­terns, by using the out­line of vec­tor file, APUJAN implies that the world we see is actu­al­ly drawn. We are in a world where vir­tu­al and real coex­ist. In this world, we don’t know where we are, and which part is real.

The Autumn/Winter col­lec­tion con­tains over 100 indi­vid­ual pieces. APUJAN will be dis­play­ing 36 out­fits on the run­way, fea­tur­ing head­wear, scarves, knitwear, evening gowns and ready to wear. The over­ar­ch­ing theme con­tin­ues in the brand’s sig­na­ture style, fea­tur­ing ori­en­tal details and west­ern con­tours, with addi­tion­al ele­ments that draw on the tra­di­tions of fan­ta­sy and imag­i­na­tion. This sea­son, the details of ori­en­tal cloth­ing ele­ments such as cheongsam buck­le, ori­en­tal col­lar and sleeve, and tra­di­tion­al fes­tive head­wear can be found inte­grat­ed into dif­fer­ent mod­ern style gar­ments such as shirts, coats, dress­es and gowns. There are also more sports and leisure styles. The acces­sories that can be seen on the run­way include hand-woven hats, flo­ral head­wear and 3‑D print­ed gears.

As with pre­vi­ous col­lec­tions, APUJAN works with his orig­i­nal and exclu­sive­ly devel­oped fab­rics, using a wide range of tech­niques such as dig­i­tal embroi­dery, semi 3‑D jacquard fab­ric, trans­par­ent embroi­dery and dig­i­tal print. He also works with varies mate­ri­als such as silk, cot­ton and cash­mere, as well as lamb and meri­no wools. A vari­ety of knit­ted styles are cre­at­ed with these raw mate­ri­als using both man­u­al and auto­mat­ed weav­ing. A large num­ber of com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed tech­niques are also used this sea­son to cre­ate the knit­ted styles.

In recent sea­sons, APUJAN has also incor­po­rat­ed sports and leisure ele­ments into the design. This sea­son, he is col­lab­o­rat­ing with NIKE again, using the upcom­ing Air Max as the shoes on the show, which links to, and echoes with the cloth­ing. A set of knitwear cre­at­ed by APUJAN to pay trib­ute to NIKE AIR MAX will also fea­ture on this show, which explores new design pos­si­bil­i­ties for cloth­ing for the future (This item is not for sale).

DJ Ques­tion­Mark (Chi-Shuan Ying), music direc­tor of APUJAN, pro­duces orig­i­nal music accord­ing to the theme of the show. This sea­son, using the glitch and future beat styles; he mix­es strong elec­tron­ic sound with soul­ful funk and jazz tex­ture to set the atmos­phere for the show. 4 orig­i­nal tracks will pre­mier at the show, includ­ing a sam­ple from the top rank­ing tune in Tai­wan, “On Cloud 9” by RPG &V!CKY, echo­ing the top­ic of this sea­son “The Cloud-Mak­ing Fac­to­ry”. The music will be per­formed by DJ Ques­tion­Mark Live which con­sists of a group of UK musi­cians, includ­ing Jack Ban­jo Courtney/Trumpet, Adam McLoughlin/Tenor sax­o­phone, Sophie Watson/Alto sax­o­phone, Jere­my Paul/Drum.

APUJAN is proud to wel­come Aus­tralian born, Tai­wanese R&B singer, Julia Wu as this season’s spe­cial guest. In addi­tion to vis­it­ing the UK for the first time, it is also the first time Julia to be invit­ed over­seas as spe­cial guest at Fash­ion Week. She will be wear­ing the APUJAN 2020 Spring/Summer col­lec­tion “A Strange Thief of Time” dinosaurs and star­ry sky jacquard side cut-out gown on the day of the fash­ion show. Through APUJAN designs, she inter­prets the soft and del­i­cate side hid­den behind the dis­tinc­tive character.