As a Hong Kong-Canadian fashion designer, I hope to share my vision to the world through fashion and be able to relate people with similar intersectionality. In the collection Pandemonium: Floating Down the Stream of Pandemonium, I will be protesting my frustration and disappointment on Hong Kong – the city where I grew up in.

Pandemonium is a chaotic city where is coined as the capital of Hell. To me, this is the perfect metaphor of Hong Kong. The movement in the city flows like the turbulent stream of Pandemonium. Suffocating landscapes. Endless waves of people. Fluctuant levels of emotions. This unseeable momentum drives the people to the endless end. Unstoppable, continuous and chaotic. Everyone goes on in their lives every day, as if they know their final destination, yet perhaps only less than half a soul knows. As floating down this unceasing stream of chaos, the people are hopeless, helpless, and careless, to anything and everything.

The collection is both a celebration and criticism to my heritage. The collection is to bring the international audience to have a look at Hong Kong from a local lens – busy and illusional. Whilst the collection also brings you to the dark side of the city. Collectivism is so deeply rooted among the people and it is a criticism of them merely chasing after material life, yet forgot about their individuality.

In the end, perhaps now as well, they blend, and they float along the stream of Pandemonium. Consciously. Subconsciously. And Helplessly…

I am very grateful for the four-year journey here in the fashion design program. My growth is not only limited to my creative side, but also in my personal life. All in all, the final collection is a full circle to me as coming to Ryerson in first year, I was very insecure about my heritage and even once wanted to deny it. As the years went, I started to acknowledge the beauty in culture, and I always get inspired by it since then. Therefore, that leads to the development of my aspiration to promote the Hong Kong (and Cantonese) culture to the world through my works of art. Even though, launching my brand LEI NIP HEI would be a long-term goal, I am hoping to try out the Cultural Studies graduate program in Nagoya, Japan next year. As I believe the program will help my understand better the theory of culture, and hope that I will able to apply my knowledge to my future designs!