During this summer, I got the chance to interview one of the most famous Chinese tie-dye artist Fanglu Lin.

She is one of the 30 finalists for the Craft Prize 2020 organised by the Loewe Foundation and her artworks about Chinese tie-dye is going to be exhibited in Paris soon.

“I saw the possibility of using tie-dye technique for self-expression which is quite important for our young generation.” As a young artist, she brought a lot of creative ideas and new designs for traditional Chinese tie-dye technique. “Actually, a lot of foreigners are fascinated by our traditional culture and the Chinese tie-dye sofa I designed earned a lot of popularity from international furniture buyers.” Fanglu Lin said.

By the interview with Fanglu, I started to think what kind of intervention can combine the traditional zha-ran with modern interior design together and attract people’s attention. I start to search and found out that “the global home fragrance market size is expected to reach USD 27.63 billion by 2027” (by Fortune Business Insights) which inspired me to create a home diffuser with zha-ran fabrics.

When I keep going with the journey of exploring all the possibilities of zha-ran innovation, I noticed that young generation is very fond of unique or customised designs to present their identities. So now I came up with the idea of zha-ran 2020 Nature Collection. With the combination of tie-dye fabric and gold, the design conveyed the message of ‘the beauty of tradition’.