10 Questions with Yixuan Nie

Yixuan Nie is a rising multidisciplinary artist and fashion designer based in New York, whose work has been celebrated for its bold narrative power and innovative vision. Originally from Beijing, she draws profound inspiration from the layered textures of hutong life, infusing them with global relevance and artistic depth. Alongside fashion design, she also works across styling, printmaking, and illustration, expanding her visual language and narrative scope.

A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, Yixuan’s collections have been showcased at New York Fashion Week, featured on Vogue Runway, and selected for Vogue’s “The Essential Spring 2025 Trends.” Her designs, blending cultural memory and contemporary aesthetics, have also earned recognition in the Redress Design Award competition.

Through sculptural garments, material experimentation, and cross-disciplinary practices, Yixuan is quickly establishing herself as a distinct and influential voice among a new generation of artists redefining fashion as a form of cultural dialogue and artistic expression.

@lea_yixuannie

ARTIST STATEMENT

“As a fashion artist, I seek to transform lived environments and cultural memories into material narratives. Growing up in the intricate web of Beijing’s hutongs, I became fascinated by how everyday spaces encode history, resilience, and human connection.

My work reimagines these textures, aged bricks, weathered surfaces, collective traces, through garment construction, textile alteration, and conceptual layering. Each piece embodies the delicate tension between nostalgia and change, permanence and impermanence.

Working between Beijing and New York, I aim to challenge and expand the global understanding of contemporary Chinese culture, moving beyond stereotypes toward a more nuanced, evolving portrait. Through fashion as an artistic medium, I build bridges between personal memory and collective identity, tradition and transformation.”

— Yixuan Nie

INTERVIEW

Please tell us a bit about your background and how you first got into art?

I was born and raised in Beijing, spending my childhood in the quiet and intricate spaces of the hutongs, traditional alleyway neighbourhoods where life moves slowly, and people live closely together.
From an early age, drawing became a natural interest for me. My first experience of art was sketching outdoors in the streets and parks. I drew peeling red doors, hanging laundry, steaming breakfast, and neighbours chatting by their windows. These everyday scenes were my first visual education, shaping my sense of composition, rhythm, and tone. Over time, these small moments accumulated and became the foundation of my visual sensibility.
Later, I received formal art training and went on to study fashion design at Tsinghua University. I then moved to New York to pursue my MFA at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Looking back, I think my artistic journey began far earlier than any classroom. It started in childhood, in silence, and in a deep instinct to hold onto things that might otherwise disappear. That early environment made me especially sensitive to materials, colour, and local culture, all of which continue to shape my work today.

You grew up in the picturesque hutongs of Beijing. How have those early surroundings shaped the way you see and create today?

The hutongs shaped not only how I see the world, but also how I tell stories. I've always been sensitive to spaces that have been lived in, walls with peeling paint, a plastic chair catching sunlight, worn doorways. These are not just visual elements to me; they hold emotional memory.
People bring rhythm into these spaces: buying breakfast at a corner shop, stretching in a park, chatting under an old locust tree. These moments aren't dramatic, but they have a quiet structure and subtle beauty. I try to capture this in my designs through details, especially knots and ties inspired by everyday scenes, like how vegetables are bagged in markets or how aprons are fastened behind the back.
In my work, each look is like a character from those streets. I build visual scenes through silhouettes, colours, and prints, like fragments from a film. My goal isn't to reconstruct the past, but to carry its emotional weight forward, giving it new form and life.

How did your time at the Fashion Institute of Technology influence your artistic voice and direction?

Studying at FIT helped me move from intuitive making toward more structured, intentional design. The program encouraged me to explore my personal narrative in-depth and to think critically about how to translate abstract emotion into concrete form. It gave me the tools to shape a design language that is layered, honest, and conceptually grounded.
At the same time, living in New York was a turning point. The city's diversity and openness made space for cultural difference, and I began to see my background not as a limitation, but as a strength. My perspective, shaped by my experience growing up in China, became something unique that I wanted to share. Being surrounded by so many voices and visual languages helped me realize that my work could live between categories: between art and fashion, tradition and experimentation.

You work across fashion, photography, illustration, and printmaking. How do these different media speak to each other in your practice?

Each medium helps me look at the same idea from a different angle. Fashion is the core, where I build form, material, and structure. But photography allows me to give the garment its emotional setting, its world. Illustration helps me access a more instinctive, childlike part of my imagination. Printmaking gives me rhythm and repetition.
They're not separate lanes for me; they complete each other. When I design a look, I already imagine how it might exist in a frame or drawing. These disciplines help me tell the full story. Together, they make the narrative more layered and whole.

Can you walk us through your creative process when working with fashion design? How do you go from the first idea to the final outcome?

I often begin with observation, walking, photographing, and collecting moments from daily life. For example, in my "YANXIA" collection, I started by documenting scenes from Beijing hutongs: the way vegetables are chopped on a wooden board, or how clothes hang in early light. These moments become sketches, prints, or silhouettes.
From there, I experiment with fabrics, shapes, and layering. I treat fabric almost like skin; it has memory, tension, and softness. I often build looks as if I'm building a small scene, like a still from a film. The result isn't just clothing, it's a character with its own time and place.

Memory and identity are central to your work. What stories or emotions are you most drawn to exploring through your designs?

I'm drawn to small but emotionally charged moments, which might seem ordinary but carry quiet weight. For example, the smell of home-cooked food, the sound of someone washing vegetables in a metal basin, or the shadow of your childhood home at dusk.
These aren't loud memories, but they stay. They shape how we see ourselves. Through design, I try to bring them back, not as nostalgia, but as a way to honour what built us. My work often explores cultural identity not as a fixed idea, but as something in motion, soft, shifting, and deeply personal.

In your statement, you said that even decay can be tender. Can you tell us more about how you see beauty in imperfection or transformation?

I've always been drawn to surfaces that take time, like a scratched wooden door, a faded shop sign, or an old tank top that's been worn thin and mended. There's something deeply human in these marks. They speak of care, resilience, and a life fully lived.
To me, beauty doesn't lie in perfection; it lives in what remains. In the hutongs, almost nothing is new, yet everything is alive. That's what I try to convey in my work: textures that feel touched, silhouettes that move, materials that hold history. Transformation doesn't have to mean loss; it can be a soft, steady continuation.

How do you approach cultural identity in your work, especially as you move between Beijing and New York?

For me, cultural identity is not a fixed label; it's a continuous process of movement and reflection. Living between Beijing and New York has made me more aware of what I carry with me, but also more willing to question it. I don't try to represent "China" in a fixed way. Instead, I respond through fragments, such as food traditions, ways of using objects, textures, and visual systems, that naturally guide my design.
I often try to challenge Western assumptions of "Eastern aesthetics." My work focuses more on the lived realities of contemporary China than on ancient visual symbols. To me, identity is not a static definition; it's the accumulation of personal experiences, constantly in motion, in tension, and in flux. It is both a respect for roots and an openness to transformation. That is what shapes my stance as an independent designer.
This way of reinterpreting Chinese identity through contemporary visual language has already been recognised internationally; my collections have been featured in platforms like New York Fashion Week, Vogue, and 1Granary, reflecting growing interest in a new generation of East Asian creative voices.

Are you currently working on a new collection or project that you're excited about?

Yes, I'm currently developing a new series that continues my focus on public life in Beijing, but this time, I'm approaching it through a more athletic and surreal lens. I'm interested in how movement and sound shape shared spaces, such as the way older men stretch in the park or how children play after school. These observations inspire new silhouettes, prints, and wearable narratives.
I'm also experimenting with shadow printing and soft sculpture, allowing each look to hold more ambiguity and imaginative space. As always, photography and illustration are part of the process; they help me expand the emotional world around each design. This new series feels like entering a dreamlike version of memory, where emotional truth becomes more vivid than realism.
Even though I now live in a different city, I still encounter these quiet, layered moments in everyday life. They continue to surprise me, and they keep fueling the next story I want to tell.

Lastly, what would you like to explore more deeply in your future work, either thematically or in terms of medium?

I want to continue exploring the theme of "traces of life", how surfaces carry memory, tension, and intimacy. I'm also beginning to integrate more sustainable thinking into my process, including working with found materials and exploring new forms, such as moving images. I want to keep dissolving the boundaries between garment, storytelling, and environment.
Living in New York has exposed me to new voices and visual systems, adding layers to the way I think about place and identity. The city constantly changes, language shifts, emotions resurface, and rituals adapt. This state of flux keeps me alert.
There are still so many stories I haven't told, some as small as a shadow or a hand gesture. But often, it's those quietest details that carry the most emotional truth. My work is ongoing; it's not only about building garments but also about ways of seeing. I hope to continue creating work that connects people to memory, place, and feeling across cultures and time.

Artist’s Talk

Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a curated promotional platform that offers artists the opportunity to articulate their vision and engage with our diverse international readership through insightful, published dialogues. Conducted by Mohamed Benhadj, founder and curator of Al-Tiba9, these interviews spotlight the artists’ creative journeys and introduce their work to the global contemporary art scene.

Through our extensive network of museums, galleries, art professionals, collectors, and art enthusiasts worldwide, Al-Tiba9 Interviews provides a meaningful stage for artists to expand their reach and strengthen their presence in the international art discourse.

Apply for an interview >>

Related Interviews