Last month I was happy to see the culmination of a year-long project photographed in Taipei and at London Fashion Week. It’s story behind Taiwanese fashion designer Jenn Lee’s tenth collection.

While I still intend to finish a director’s cut from the material, a ten-minute edit is currently available to view as part of a spotlight on fashion on art and geopolitics series TracksEast on European arts/culture TV network, ARTE.

I’m not sure how neatly Jenn Lee herself fits into the episode. She’s a provocative designer, but not in a political sense and has no intention to be. As an artist, that’s how it goes: people will always project their own thoughts onto your work.

The same goes for how people view the security situation in Taiwan. It seems that the further people are from Taiwan, the more their perception of the situation differs from that of people living on Taiwan. For most people in Taiwan, the threat of armed conflict is nothing new. They just keep their heads down and get on with their lives.

A main focus in this short documentary is Jenn Lee’s embrace of the qipao and traditional dressmaking techniques in her latest collection. However, as Dennis Fei, her husband points out, “Sometimes a qipao is just a qipao”.

Here’s a link to the German dubbed version. The Jenn Lee part starts around 20 minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94698m-6IYE