RAY CHU on the Inspiration Behind His Latest AW22 Collection
RAY CHU is a disruptive, sexy, a-gender RTW brand established in 2016, characterised by a unique combination of refined quality, innovative craftsmanship and the use of carefully placed cut-outs. Their latest autumn-winter collection was presented at London Fashion Week this February and Cohorted have taken the opportunity to sit down with the mastermind behind the brand, Ray Chu, to discuss all things fashion, sustainability and the inspiration behind his latest collection.
What was it about fashion that drew you in? Did you always know you wanted to be a fashion designer?
It’s that to be able to incorporate conceptual inspiration, ideas, culture into wearing it that is really fun and exciting. No. I was originally about to become an English Teacher in elementary school as my major in college was English Education. I studied fashion after college.
If you could choose three words that best describe the RAY CHU brand, what would they be?
Provocative, Genderless, Sustainable in progress (as we are working really hard to become more sustainable).
"We are still working on trying to be much more sustainable. Right now, we use vegan leather, dead stock fabric and only produce when there is order..."
You presented your AW22 collection at LFW digitally this year, is this something you always plan to do or do you ever hope to present in a physical show?
We would, for sure, like to present in a physical show format, however, with Covid and timing, we are waiting for the right moment to do so.
Could you explain a little more about your latest ‘Chapter IIIl - Touch Me’ collection and the inspiration behind it?
We wanted to show the desire & pleasure of being touched and we did a collaboration with an artist DrawMeDenis whose work are mostly LGBTQ+ group portraits from a personal perspective and fantasies. And, we use lots of vegan leather in this collection which we exclusively co-created with THE LAB 808 using recycled tea leaves & recycled plastic.
Did you face any challenges designing this collection due to the pandemic?
Not really. The only thing might just be it took longer time to ship these materials to our studio to do samples and we were always in a hurry.
RAY CHU is an A-gender RTW brand, does this pose any limitations on your design process?
No. It actually gives me more ideas and I can try more experiments.
Sustainability is also an integral part to the RAY CHU brand. Does the use of sustainable materials inform your design choices at all and are there any challenges that come with this?
We are still working on trying to be much more sustainable. Right now, we use vegan leather, dead stock fabric and only produce when there is order.
The challenge of using dead stock fabric is that there is a limit to produce the amount of pieces to sell but also it’s probably better not to produce too much.
And finally, what does the future hold for RAY CHU?
We will still stay to who we are and grow bigger and be more sustainable and we want our label to be seen.
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