Yuqi Zhao
Bio
Yuqi Zhao, a womenswear designer focused on body narrative and fashion psychology. Taking “somatization” as her core concept, she views clothing as a tangible medium for abstract emotions, translating trauma, resilience, and memory into visual language to build a bridge between the body, emotion, and memory through fashion.
The Body as Translator: Fashioning Somatization
In the digital age, fashion is often reduced to a polished disguise for the body—social media filters and the narrative of an ideal body have led us to conceal our true emotions behind clothing, severing the connection between inner feelings and outward expression. Centered on somatization, this project regards fashion as a tangible psychological landscape, exploring and translating ineffable mental states: trauma, resilience and memory.
Taut silhouettes shaped through distortion and deconstruction express anxiety; soft drapes suggest healing; frayed fabrics evoke pain. Mending and upcycling connect material repair with inner restoration. Beyond aesthetics, the collection constructs a non-verbal emotional narrative, positioning fashion as a medium that materializes silence, visualizes invisible emotional weight, and honors the scarred.
The body is a living archive.It silently records every fragment of memory, every trace of trauma, and every quiet moment of resilience.My work begins here: treating the body not just as a form to clothe, but as a canvas of lived experience.
These pieces do not merely cover the body—they reveal it.They are both armor and vulnerability, holding the marks of struggle while allowing room for softness.
In this tension, the wearer’s own story meets the archive of the body, creating a shared space of recognition.
