When it came to writing a little introduction about label Daydream Nation I was slightly lost for words. I’m not sure why as the label is so visual and playful that there is so much to say, but after putting the interview together all I could think about was fairytales and my imagination kept drifting faraway making it incredibly difficult to concentrate. So I decided to keep the introduction factual and give you a little background info on Kay & Jing Wong, the brother and sister design team behind the label. With previous experience working for designer Jessica Ogden, Kay is a textile graduate of both Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art while Jing also a graduate of Central Saint Martins paid his dues at theatre group Stan Wont Dance in London. The collaboration between the two has not only brought the best of two worlds together but has also resulted in injecting fashion with a much needed breath of fresh air!
Siblings are known to argue at the best of times, how do you manage to work together peacefully?
The balance between love and hate….
Describe each other in just three words?
Kay on Jing: passionate, charismatic, multi-talented
Jing on Kay: impulsive, genuine, loving
Your AW07 show at London fashion week (see video below) was fantastically theatrical. What was the motivation behind your choice of presentation?
Our belief in life in objects has led us to design garments inspired and adapted from vintage clothing that contains stories and memories. Our garments are devised through play and manipulation with old clothes. Everything has stories behind it, and without stories, there will be no history, and without history, we are nothing. We believe that fashion should not be about the trend of the day, it is something that lives on. Storytelling is integral to our belief.
What’s your response to the critics who claimed that the theatrics took attention away from the clothing?
Theatrics is not a gimmick in our usage, it is part of our language. We were very careful about that, every movement on stage was choreographed to highlight and heighten the design of the particular garment. We were telling a story about the clothes through theatrics.
What’s the most frustrating as well as the most appealing aspect of the fashion industry?
The speed of change.
What’s next for Daydream Nation?
Sleeping
And finally, which piece of advice do you wish you could have been given before you ventured into a career in fashion design?
There is more business and marketing to it than design, designers spend less than 10% of their time designing, which is advice we have been given before, but never understood it until we started doing it.
