‘The idea of merging the old and the new is something I’ve always been interested in’. Talking about her intentions and visions she says she likes ‘Turning waste into the most wanted and making fashion non-exclusive, Most importantly, a bit more colors and fun in our industry!’ This is Clara Chu speaking about her self and her brand that works with a contrasting community of creatives and cultures from both the east and west worlds.

Clara, Please tell us about yourself.

My name is Clara Chu. I am an accessories designer based in London, specializing in handbag designs. My practice re-imagines everyday, mundane objects in our domestic world such as a toothbrush, a spoon, a hoover, and a carpet into colorful pop accessories.

bags **CLARA CHU** coat **CASABLANCA** sunglasses **ACNE STUDIOS** pants **N21** shoes STYLIST’S OWN

photography **ERFAN SHEK**
styling / production **RACHEL SONG**
hair **KRISTY CHENG**
makeup **CATHY ZHANG**
model **WAI KI**

What did moving from Hong Kong to London do to you? Please talk about the influence of two different cultures (east and west) on you and your creative direction.

I believe where I grew up had a significant influence on my aesthetics of creating accessories out of ordinary objects as I’ve always enjoyed walking around markets and the old streets of Hong Kong finding old and unwanted ‘treasures’ within this compact urban city. This industrial city had a lot to offer in terms of its manufacturing and exporting history from toys, electronics, watches, plastic and rubber shoes, etc since the 50s and 60s. It’s always fascinating to me seeing these remanent businesses scattered around town sitting next to these mega financial skyscrapers. The idea of merging the old and the new is something I’ve always been interested in. London inspires me in a similar way, given the scale of development nowadays in both land and consumer goods, which is why it has paved my practice into a creative direction of preserving ‘things’ around us and ‘things’ we grew up with whilst questioning our intention to produce anything new from scratch. In both places I find, there are endless opportunities to collaborate with other creatives who are all very supportive of one another. There are also many community-led events, workshops, and exhibitions here where all creatives can get together, share skills, and engage in their own ways.

bag **CLARA CHU** dress **MONA CORDES** sleeves **MONA CORDES** earring **LAYEN HELL**. bag **CLARA CHU** bodysuit **GIORGIA ANDREAZZA** top **MONA CORDES** skirt **LIA NGUYEN** earring **LAYEN HELL**

bags **CLARA CHU** dress **MONA CORDES** necklace **P I / A H** rings **LAYEN HELL** skirt **LIA NGUYEN** shirts **MONA CORDES** hair cap STYLIST’S OWN

photography **LUCY SZULINSKA**
digital edits **GREG ORROM SWAN**
producer / art director **MONA CORDES** , **CLARA CHU** stylist **MARIA TERESA STRIPPOLI**
stylist assistant **GIULIA STRIPPOLI**
hair / makeup **DOMINIKA OBACZ**
nail artist **YANICE GIANINA**
models **SARA ZOLLI** , **ILLANA DA SILVA** , **AYAKA HASEGAWA**

Everyone somewhere or another has been influenced by their childhood. Could you please walk us through your own progressing years? How was growing up for you, Was it certain for you what you going to do growing up?

It was not certain to me what I wanted to do/become. I was very much an active kid growing up who enjoyed all kinds of outdoor or indoor activities like ballet, playing the piano, track and field, and swimming. I think being very outgoing since a very young age has influenced me to always be on the lookout for interesting things I could discover on the streets and everywhere I go, as well as a curious mind finding out how things are made.
I also painted and drew a lot as a kid. It was something I thought I would always end up doing. I was born and raised in Hong Kong before moving to Toronto, Canada for high school where I’ve grown a significant amount of interest in creative arts and designs. I had a chance to go to New York for a fine art degree than (9 years ago) but decided to move to London in the end for a foundation degree in Camberwell.
At the time, I was draping and playing around with old yoga mats building these absurd and abstract forms around my friends’ bodies, taking funny photos, and documenting the processes. I called them clothes and decided I’d go to fashion school. My Dad also had a background in product design. He would build things out of absolutely anything around the house and so I grew up being very influenced by his creative mind. One year built a Christmas tree out of cardboard and it looked so real.
Before all this, I had no knowledge or background in Fashion and had no idea what pattern cutting was. In fact, the majority of my inspirations growing up were often anime graphics (my favorite show was Yikitate Japan), paper crafts, and later on artists like David Lachapelle, Jacques Tati, Pandemonia, Toilet Paper Magazine, Martino Gamper and Carol Bove, etc.

**RETRO** bags **CLARA CHU** jacket STYLIST’S OWN

How did all this start, How fashion became your professional inclination leading to, LCF & RCA?

Prior to entering the RCA (where I studied MA in accessories), I did a BA womenswear design course at the London College of Fashion. I was already creating some transformable and detachable bags on top of these tailored garments for my degree collection and thought I would enter a Masters's degree to learn more in-depth about bag-making. After I graduated from the RCA, I did a traineeship at Sophia Webster, in her handbag design team for about 8 months.
I first conceptualized the idea of upcycling household items in my designs when I was in the first year of RCA. I was exploring the world of food packaging, food transportation including takeaway, packed-lunches, the tools people were using historically, how they have evolved and how they differ in different cultures and eras. I soon then picked my favorite form of food packaging, which was a Tupperware container, and did intense research on its history, manufacturing technique, and a huge variety of designs. I wanted to redesign a lunch bag essentially and combine something so functional with the fashion quotient.

bags **CLARA CHU** jacket **MERO RETRO** trousers **MERO**
photography **EULOGIO**
producer / art director **CARA BREGAZZI**
models **ASHA PANDEY** , SONER COLAK

Your work encourages recycling and makes the knick-picking style a trend of its own. I wonder what kind of challenges you would have gone through.

One challenge would always be completing my everyday to-do list in the most efficient way possible. I’m still trying to get better at sticking to my working hours and the amount of time I can afford to spend on a bag based on the budget and design criteria of each client. As a designer who produces one-of-a-kind pieces, the production process can be challenging. Compare to the traditional system of making a collection where you source x amount of fabrics and produce x amount of products each season, there is no prototyping nor would you know what material you could collect tomorrow for your next client. This different model of design is always challenging in terms of keeping track of my production costs.
Besides, keeping up with social media presence is challenging because not only do you spend a lot of your creative energy on designing and making, but you also have to be creative on how you are advertising the brand and yourself, coming up with interesting and fun ways to engage and inspire the community and to encourage conversations surrounding ethos and values of the brand.

The craftsmanship in your case is an innovation each time since your sources keep changing. How does the concept flow for you in such cases?

Even though materials change with the making of each product, I try to imagine all possibilities each material could transform into, both aesthetically and functionally. The process of conceptualizing a product is as follows. I first decide on the style of the product, whether it be a shoulder bag, a top handle bag or a tote bag, etc. I then focus on the details such as fittings, closures, and handles and try to find interesting objects from my material boxes that resemble the shapes or functions of these fittings. For example, using a telephone wire instead of threads, a shower hose as a shoulder strap, or a shower curtain ring instead of a metal hoop is used in traditional handbags. A humorous translation is essential in my practice and a huge part of my process is engineering these unexpected objects against things we’re most familiar with such as textiles and clothes. It’s like building legos; it’s a fun and creative process that also involves problem-solving and can be challenging at times. For example thinking of how to deconstruct a toaster whilst keeping all the screws and wires undamaged, and screwing some components back onto a cushion.

In the current times when experiences are heavily influenced by technology, Arts and crafts today have a symbiotic relationship with this evolution. Please tell us the role technological evolution plays in your own artistic direction.

It has allowed me to be more creative in the way I tell my brand and my story, through a wider variety of digital mediums and platforms to produce content, hence making it more accessible to the audience. This is something I’d like to keep working on, a better online system for customization of the products, as well as a digital material donation system that hopefully can follow. It’s also enabled me to learn and try out different software like geometric free form and the haptic arm, different 3D printing and molding techniques, etc that’s enriched the design process and experimentations. I feel with technological evolution in current times, it is more important than ever that we appreciate what we have around us physically, whether they be people, tools, things we consume, and most important skills and the handcrafted. As an artist who mostly produces work in the physical world, I’ve had many collaborative projects with digital and 3D artists, photographers, and filmmakers who worked with the brand on presenting the vision and ethos in a different and more compelling way.

Your work as much as it's upcycling it's also empowering, What next are you looking forward to doing from here?

Next is to involve the community more in both my sourcing and production processes by encouraging customers to donate their own materials in order to receive a new product in return. I would like to spend more time developing a new website that offers a more accessible, systemized, and efficient process for purchasing a Clara Chu custom bag. I’m also hoping to be involved in more collaborative projects with some homeware stores in London and run more workshops on repurposing materials into accessories. After a few installations/props/set design works I’ve been involved with this year, I would like to keep myself open to opportunities like that and transform everyday objects sculpturally in other artistic directions other than merely accessories products.

I am imagining the environment of your studio, Please help me understand it better, What is the ambiance you work in, what kind of music do you listen to and what is your favorite part about your work?

My studio is usually a mess and quite chaotic as collections/donations flow in.
I don’t have a huge space but it’s enough to create with a few tables and some tools. The majority that fills up the studio is my material archive where all objects are kept and color-coded into boxes on multiple shelves. My studio mates all work in different creative fields such as illustrations, animations, painting, furniture, jewelry, etc. It is nice to spend time with like-minded people from other artistic disciplines.
With tunes, it depends on the time of the day. I listen to all kinds of music and sounds whilst working but currently, post-punk / soul jazz/house brings me joy and turning to trance/electro/techno for nice concentration music.
As much as I enjoy making, my favorite part is actually the sourcing part. I usually source my household materials from the streets of London, usually outside homes, yard sales, and second-hand shops. I also have a wonderful network of friends and families who would donate household items that no longer function or are about to be thrown away, i.e broken cables and headphones. I also source my already existing objects as materials from a community arts charity in south London called Work and Play - they’re a supermarket-style scrap store that presents waste and surpluses as arts and crafts materials, ranging from kitchenware to fabrics. I have benefitted from the charity many times, I love to visit there to collect unwanted household items and supplies, and will help continue their mission of inspiring artful reuse and encouraging social responsibility.
Recently, I’ve gotten quite a few donations from interacting with my London community on Instagram stories and comments, where I go collect objects from their home - my most recent donation was baby plastic toy rings from a pram.

Last but not least. What is the underline factor that keeps you going?

Turning waste into the most wanted and making fashion non-exclusive. It brings me satisfaction witnessing the surprise element of when people find out what goes into the products. This is what keeps the creative making going - the enjoyment I get making this humorous translation with the objects I collect. Most importantly, a bit more colors and fun in our industry!