Meet Eric L. Chen
QFIN is excited to share our interview with Eric Chen. A fourth year Commerce student that has embraced and expressed his love for fashion and design. He has been able to showcase this passion through the various personal and professional projects he's taken on. In the past, he designed and launched his own t-shirt company selling screen printed t-shirt. He is now working with Losers Weepers Vintage helping to design their logo and merchandise. Moving forward he hopes to create his own short film. This creativity and passion for this industry is truly unique and refreshing. This interview gives you a closer look into Eric, but will also educate you on fashion, design, self expression, architecture, and so much more.
How have you been exposed to fashion?
He was first exposed to fashion in grade 6. He focussed his style on mall core brands such as Abercrombie, H&M, etc. Then coming into high school his style started to evolve straying away from fast fashion brands to focus on more grass route street wear brands such as Stüssy and other local brands such as Raised By Wolves in Montreal. This made him appreciate the good quality fabric that these smaller brands use to create their clothing. Focusing on these smaller clothing brands has allowed him to develop his own individual style. This focus on self expression and individuality followed him into university as he stopped purchasing clothes from brick and motor stores and began thrifting. Eric fell in love with thrifting because of the fun challenge it can be to find the right piece. He also loves the sustainability aspect of thrifting and the fact that you are in a way repurposing someone’s garbage.
What has inspired your style?
He really sees clothing an an outlet for self expression. He is a big supporter of authenticity and having “what you do, say and think all line up”. This is a code he lives by and can be seen influencing his style. Having a message intentionally designed within your clothing makes a difference on how you are perceived. NUMBER (N)INE is one of his favourite brands because of their ability to embed strong messages in their t-shirts. His love for the brand shows his focus on letting the clothes you wear communicate a message to others. Another factor that has influenced and inspired his style was spending time in Europe. He had the opportunity to spend a semester studying in France last year and during that time he saw his style transform. He arrived to France with a wardrobe full of colour, but then shifted his style to have more neutral tones. This was intentionally done to have his clothing reflect his personality of being a laid back and not flashy guy.
Aside from actual fashion brands and designers, Eric also draws most of his inspiration from graphic design, photography and architecture.
What influenced you to become involved with fashion?
He has always been into clothing, but what really pushed this involvement in fashion was Instagram because he became exposed to so many images and his curiosity of fashion grew from there. He follows various style icons on Instagram such as Playboi Carti and ASAP Rocky to get inspiration. Also living in Europe for a semester influenced him to become more involved with fashion.
What are your favourite brands?
Raf simons, Martin Margiela, Yohii Yamamoto, Rick Owens, Alyx Studios are his top five favourite brands. But what draws to these brands? Aside from the actual designs, he really focuses on the person behind the brand. He educates himself on the creator of the brand by watching YouTube interviews and reading articles where he is able to learn about what these designers stand for.
There has been a major transformation from you in first year, to you now in fourth year, what pushed this change away from a “typical” commerce student to a more fashion/ design oriented student?
He has always been the type of person to diverge from the mainstream. Naturally it is not hard for him to be different. He likes to be noticed for being different and likes to have a quality that makes him stand out. His passion for design and fashion helped push him towards this transformation. As well as the need to have “what you do, say and think all line up” has influenced this push.
Are you involved with any organizations outside of school that allow you to express your creativity?
He is not involved with any organizations or clubs outside of school that would allow him to express his creativity. Instead, he has many friends that are involved with fashion that either model or style and he will go to them when he wants to do something creative.
Do you have any upcoming projects?
Currently Eric is working on an independent project called Oligarchy, a short film that is expected to be released April 2019. He is also designing for Losers Weepers, an online vintage clothing store, having re-designed their logo, creating stickers, tote bag designs and other merchandise.
What are your thoughts on fusing art with commerce?
"Art does a lot more for society than commerce does. Art is universal and something that everyone can relate to. Whereas, commerce sells products that you consume that make you feel a certain way. Art is something you can look at and automatically relate to, you don’t have to buy anything." Personally, Eric does not look at his passion for art as something that will allow himself to profit. He is more focused on simply creating pieces, meeting cool people and having the ability to put messages on fabric for people to see.
What are your thoughts towards the movement of high fashion shifting their designs towards street wear?
“Street wear is an underground movement that happened in the 80s and became appropriated recently with fast fashion retailer copying the high fashion street wear designs. Virgil Abloh did a great job of blending the two worlds of street wear and high fashion with what he is doing with Off-White. He is making universal designs that everyone is able to recognize and understand. The diagonal lines that are incorporated throughout the brand are intentional because it symbolizes the places you should not go. People see lines everywhere, for example lines on the road to tell you where and where not to drive.
Essentially these high fashion brands are a business; they design products that will sell. If they see the trend towards street wear, then they are forced in a way to create products that embody the street wear vibe to make a profit.”
How have you seen architecture influence design?
“Architecture has been influencing fashion. Virgil Abloh has been able to showcase this. He studied Engineering as his undergrad and then he did a masters in architecture then after all of that he finally got into fashion. It is interesting to see how he applies architecture to all of his practices, especially fashion. It is especially evident in everything designed around his clothing, specifically the runway shows. They are designed with architectural influence in mind. Many of them taking place in an aesthetic location or culturally important location.”
Eric was able to witness the merge of architecture and fashion when he went to an exhibit at the ROM featuring designer Iris Van Herpen where she collaborated with architect Philip Beesley to create dresses that were influenced by buildings.
We would like to thank Eric for taking the time to chat with us about his personal style, love for fashion and trends in the industry. He really embodies what QFIN is all about and for that we are proud to have him as a member!