What I Want to Say to Donghua

I came to Shanghai from a world away, and Donghua is where I finally felt the ground beneath my feet. Mandarin was never my language—it was the thing that made every day here a small mountain to climb. But those climbs changed me in ways I never expected.

I'm grateful for what Donghua gave me: a classroom that stretched far beyond four walls. It was in language labs and studio critiques, in internships and campus festivals, that I learned to shed my old limits and build something new from what I found. The awards and the résumé lines matter, yes—but what I hold closer is how all of it reshaped the way I see fashion, and how I now understand the culture that raised it.

01 Learning by Competing: Where Tech Meets Design

Competition pushed me to grow fast. While studying at Donghua, I entered every design contest I could find. Each one forced me to think differently and work harder than the last.

One competition really stuck with me. The theme asked us to use AI-generated images as the starting point for a design story. I built a whole narrative around those images—characters, mood, the world they lived in—and then designed the clothes to match. The project won third place. But the real win was discovering how naturally technology and creativity can work together. That was when I first understood something important: clothes don't just hang on a body. They tell you who that person is before they ever say a word.

I carried that thinking into the next challenge. Recently, I competed in the Beyond Denim Innovation Design Competition, a partnership between Donghua and CONE DENIM. Twenty-six designers. Over a hundred garments. CONE DENIM supplied the fabric. My job was to make it do things denim doesn't usually do. I pulled apart old silhouettes and rebuilt them. I worked the surface until it stopped feeling familiar. In the end, my collection—traditional lines meeting modern shapes—took home the Bronze Prize.

Every competition taught me more about what fabric can say and how a garment can speak. And standing on those podiums, as someone still learning the language and the culture around me, each moment felt earned in a way I can't quite explain.

 

02 Behind the Curtain: Steaming, Sorting, Staying Calm

Design isn't just paper sketches and runway lights. A lot of it happens backstage, in the tight minutes before a show, in all the small things nobody sees. I showed up wherever they'd let me. PLUS SERIES 2024SS. HANGING DING 2024SS. FREJA 2025SS. I worked backstage for all of them. I managed garments at USHER HAUS events. I helped with displays and talked to models at the BILLION DEVON show. Nothing fancy. Steaming clothes. Keeping racks in order. Making sure the right piece hit the runway at the right time. Staying quiet when everything around me got loud. That chaos taught me more than any classroom could. I saw how a show really comes together—from frantic prep to final walk. I learned what it takes to keep things moving when the pressure is on.

That's the fashion industry I know now. Not the polished version you watch from a seat. The real one. Fast. Messy. Held together by people who don't flinch.

03 Clothes That Speak: Bringing Cambodia to Campus

Design, for me, has always started with where I come from. During the university's International Culture Festival, I found my own way to share that—through fabric. I designed and made small souvenirs woven with traditional Cambodian motifs. I cooked food from home and set out drinks. I stood there with students from everywhere and told them about the customs I grew up with. The moment I remember most was a showcase of Cambodian dress. I took traditional pieces and adjusted them slightly—nothing drastic, just enough to make them mine. Then I put them on and walked across campus. My own small runway. The patterns moved with me. The skirt flowed in a place far from where it was made. I wasn't just showing clothes. I was watching my culture meet the eyes of people who had never seen it before. And somehow, they understood. That feeling stayed with me. Clothes became my way of talking to the world.

Outside of class, I go wherever fashion lives in Shanghai. Exhibitions. Fabric fairs. Brand events. I walk through cultural shows and city streets, slowly piecing together China's past and present. This whole journey has been hard. The language. The distance. The moments I wasn't sure I could do it. But every small breakthrough built something in me. Confidence. Clarity. A quiet certainty that this path is mine.

I want to keep going. Keep designing. Keep finding new ways to put things together. Someday, I hope to become the kind of designer who builds bridges—between materials, between ideas, between cultures.

Source: Donghua University