Blandness

Category: Apparel

Blandness is not the absence of intensity, but a quieter, sharper form of seduction. In this project, I transformed one of the most overlooked materials in daily life — leek skin — into a fragile yet commanding garment. Over 1,000 pieces of leek skin were collected, naturally dried, pressed, layered, and stitched by hand, turning something perishable, domestic, and almost invisible into a surface of quiet power. Inspired by François Jullien’s writing on blandness, as well as Daoist and Zen ideas of emptiness, change, and inner richness, the work challenges the Western desire for immediate visual impact. Instead of creating beauty through decoration, I searched for tension inside restraint: translucency, repetition, impermanence, and the sensual vulnerability of organic matter. The leek skin becomes almost like human skin — thin, veined, wounded, luminous — carrying traces of time, decay, and transformation. The silhouette is influenced by Chinese calligraphy, especially the character 之, allowing the body to move through a soft but deliberate line. The garment wraps, shields, and exposes at the same time, creating a figure that feels monastic yet erotic, ancient yet futuristic. Its pale surface appears calm from a distance, but up close it reveals countless irregular textures, stains, fibres, and scars. For me, Blandness is a meditation on how power can exist without noise. It is about the richness hidden beneath simplicity, the eroticism of restraint, and the moment when nature, body, and garment begin to dissolve into one another. What seems quiet is not weak; it is precise, alive, and dangerously intimate.

Download PDF 1