Rui ACTIVEWEAR

Naturally drawn to the beauty of imperfection, Chinese-born designer Rui Zhou utilizes the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic as a guiding principle throughout her work. Her asymmetric semi-sheer knitwear pieces wrap themselves around the body, becoming a second skin–albeit one punctuated by holes and held together with tiny pearl beads. The softness and careful fragility of Rui’s compositions are met with powerful severity, revealing strength in their delicacy. Rui’s work is deeply personal and speaks to her own identity as a Chinese immigrant in New York City as she tries to navigate life abroad while maintaining long-distance relationships. Through her work, Rui complicates conventional notions of love, revealing it instead to be something intricate, nuanced, fragmentary, and imperfect. Guided by her feelings and emotions, Rui meticulously articulates the inexpressible through fabric, bringing to life an alternate system of communication through her knitted works. The profound level of sensitivity emanating throughout the collection, coupled with the designer’s sheer originality has truly marked the Parsons MFA graduate as a promising new talent to watch.