Eastern and Western thought are present in the minds of nearly all eastern artists. They approach their art from a perspective of how they might weave together the thinking of both east and west, and tailor it into a seamless form, an inescapable orientation for the artist of the East. The fashion designs of Sophie Hong embody this spirit in the manner of having sprung forth from a meeting of East with West. In France Hong received cutting edge training in fashion, but her heart remained true to the mood and dream of Chinese artistry.

As her foundation, she takes the most basic element of Eastern couture, raw silk, along with the East's most soothing colors, azure, ochre, vermillion, ivory and ebony, and applies to them the western spirit of sculpting to bring her concepts to fruition: a perfect melding of East and West.

Contemporary artists do not have the luxury of deciding between the traditional past or modern present. If a work displays only modernity without tradition, then a sense of time and culture in the art will have been lost; and, if only tradition without modernity then the sense of innovation and imagination will have been lost. In search of the dying art of Xiangyun silk（湘雲紗, Ming Dynasty: circa 14 to 17th Centuries）Hong journeyed to southern China. Back home in her workshop she invested considerable time along with experts researching Xiangyun techniques for weaving, dying, and applying color in her effort to give the fabric a new after-life. Being trained in modern art has kept Hong free from the binds of tradition and the strictures of classic couture. When I saw with my own eyes how she weaved silk into a pair of leather-like shoes, molding the lines and creases like a bronze statue, shuttling between past and present, and making them effortlessly supple yet firm, I could but only sigh in deep admiration.

The paradox of purity versus practicality is a dilemma effecting most avant-garde artists and especially those creating works of fashion. A piece that is too purely fashionable inhabits the rarified space of limited access, whereas one that is too practical might fall into the realm of the profane. "Practicality" is, in fact, a quality that fashion cannot do without. Inhabiting the dominion of pure fashion while maintaining a solid grounding in the sphere of practical use, this is the realm of the fashion designer and also the boundary that separates the designer of fashion from the journeyman artist and tailor.

I've known Sophie Hong for twenty some years, and since the day we met, she has always been an exceptional designer. Besides fashion, her unique insight and wide-range of aesthetic interests extends to painting, sculpture, architecture and garden design. She had already made herself into a highly successful fashion designer at the top of her field, when a scholarship award from the Sino-France Technical Exchange Project convinced her to risk it all, and cross a vast distance to study in France and work in the prestigious Christian Dior fashion house. There, her horizons were expanded, her mind opened and her creativity liberated as she solidified years of artistic pursuits and crossed over into the realm of pure fashion. Sophie's fashion pieces have even become part of the collection in the Paris museum of fashion, the Musée Galliera.

Now, when Sophie Hong accepts invitations to major shows in New York, Milan and Paris, she brings along friends and regular folk to wear her designs. This demonstrates how her clothes not only fit the everyday person, but how they bring out a new persona in the wearer. In my opinion Sophie's fashion pieces are suitable not just to be donned as daily wear, but equally so to be hung on a wall as works of art.

Sophie puts the East and West, tradition and modernity, the pure and the everyday into a sieve that brings out her own strong and extraordinary subjective aesthetic, utilizing copious curves to create a feeling of care-free movement. Her designs retain elements from the traditional female master embroiderers of China’s past in her signature needlework, eliciting feelings of the joy and punctiliousness that went into it; and, her moiré fabrics evoke a sense of striated dunes and expansive yellow earth.
Most all her fabrics come from the finest silks, suggesting the lightness of a cloud and the the multifoliate beauty of a flower. They aptly capture the spirited words of an age-old poet as being the desire of a cloud and the envy of a rose!

Most all her fabrics come from the finest silks, suggesting the lightness of a cloud and the the multifoliate beauty of a flower. They aptly capture the spirited words of an age-old poet as being the desire of a cloud and the envy of a rose!

Who would guess that these moiré fabrics come about through a process using earth-based natural dyes that are sun-dried over the course of a week. Hong's signature needlework comes from a sensibility developed through years of research into China's legacy fashions, and the line of her curve comes from endless adjustments done by trial-and-error. Hong clothing brings the wearer not mere appreciation but an even deeper sensibility.

Translated by Scott Michael FAUL 傅思可

*From Sophie Hong 洪麗芬, Sophie HONG Volume 1. Taipei: Librairie Le Pigeonnier, 1998. Photo courtesy of Sophie Hong. All the photos are by Sophie Hong, except for those with photographers' names acknowledged.