Becoming Picasso at the Courtauld, Samuel Courtauld

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The Strand block of Somerset House, designed by William Chambers from 1775–80, has housed the Courtauld Institute of Art since 1989.

Samuel Courtauld (7 May 1876 – 1 December 1947) son of Sydney Courtauld (10 March 1840 – 20 October 1899) and Sarah Lucy Sharpe (1844–1906) was an English industrialist (great-nephew of textile magnate Samuel Courtauld) who is best remembered as an art collector. He founded the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 1932 and, after a series of gifts during the 1930s, bequeathed his collection to it upon his death.
By the early 20th century, the Courtauld family business had become a major international company, having successfully developed and marketed rayon, an artificial fibre and inexpensive silk substitute. Samuel Courtauld took charge of the firm from 1908 as general manager and as chairman from 1921 to 1946.

Personal life

He was educated at Rugby School.
He became interested in art after seeing the Hugh Lane collection on exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1917. However, his career as a collector started in 1922 following an exhibition of French art at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. Courtauld was one of the first collectors to display interest in French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. During the 1920s, he assembled an extensive collection including masterpieces by Vincent Van Gogh (Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear) or (Peach Blossom in the Crau) previously owned by Anna Boch,^[1] Édouard Manet (A Bar at the Folies-Bergère), Paul Cézanne (Montagne Sainte-Victoire) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (La Loge). The core elements of his collection were accumulated between 1926 and 1930, though his passion dwindled somewhat following the death of his wife Elizabeth (known as Lil) in 1931. Samuel founded the Courtauld Institute with Viscount Lee of Fareham and Sir Robert Witt in 1930.
Samuel provided the bulk of the money for the founding of the Courtauld Institute. His wealth came from the textile business, but on both sides of his family there were connections with the arts and traditions of patronage going back several generations. Courtauld loved pictures and wrote poems about them. On the advice of Roger Fry and others he bought French Impressionists and Cézannes and took out a lease on the best Robert Adam house in London, Home House, 20 Portman Square, in which to display them - a novel and stunning combination. His example was emulated by his younger brother Stephen, who converted the medieval ruins of Eltham Palace into an Art Deco mansion. Samuel Courtauld was the real Maecenas of the trio, and when his wife died in 1931, he made over the house in Portman Square, together with the pictures, for the use of the new institute until such time as permanent accommodation could be found for them. In the event the Portman Square house was to be the institute's home for almost sixty years.^[2]
Courtauld also created a £50,000 acquisition fund for the Tate and National galleries, helping lay the foundations of national collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.


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Becoming Picasso at the Courtauld

The incubation of genius

A dark and momentous turning point for the young artist

Feb 16th 2013 |From the print edition

Kind of blue

SAMUEL COURTAULD, founder of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, owned only one painting by Pablo Picasso. He was devoted to the French impressionists and post-impressionists, and masterpieces by Manet, Renoir, Degas, Gauguin and Van Gogh formed the core of his renowned art collection. Yet there was something about Picasso’s tender “Child with a Dove” (pictured), painted in Paris in 1901, that moved Courtauld to buy it in 1928 and keep it in his personal collection until he died in 1947.
The painting captures a moment when Picasso, aged 19, “found his own voice as an artist,” says Barnaby Wright of the Courtauld Gallery. With its bold outlines, melancholy mood and sombre palette, it anticipates the artist’s blue period, yet it sits comfortably alongside the gallery’s post-impressionist works. It is now at the centre of “Becoming Picasso”, a tightly focused exhibition on view until May 26th, which considers this pivotal moment in Picasso’s career.

demimondaine, pout, crinolined, skirt, hoop skirt,...

Picasso came to Paris for the first time in 1900, joined by Carles Casagemas, his closest friend and a fellow painter. He threw himself into mastering the craft of his French contemporaries, and managed to make enough of an impression to secure his first exhibition the next year. But a tumultuous affair soon left Casagemas emotionally distraught, and the two friends left Paris for Spain at the end of the year. Picasso returned alone to Paris in the spring of 1901 and in less than six weeks produced most of the 64 works that were exhibited in his acclaimed debut show that summer, organised by Ambroise Vollard, a leading modern-art dealer.

The first room of the Courtauld show has a small selection of these works. “Spanish Woman” reveals the skill of a savvy young artist. Here Picasso deftly evokes a grandly crinolined young woman in the manner of Goya, yet he gives his subject the confrontational pout and posture of a Parisian demimondaine. Another painting, clearly influenced by Van Gogh, depicts a visitor to the artist’s studio sitting in front of a wall hung with Picasso’s proliferating paintings. It was through the spectacle of Paris that Picasso began to try out different voices, such as Toulouse Lautrec’s in “French Can-Can” and Degas’s in “Dwarf-Dancer (La Nana)”. The artist also began signing his name “Picasso”. A 1901 self-portrait has the swagger of a self-possessed, self-conscious dandy-artist.

On the threshold of the show’s second room, two paintings on the far wall signal a drastic change in mood. One is an imagined scene of Picasso’s friend Casagemas in a coffin, the thick black lines and icy blues casting a determinedly tragic mood. The other is “Evocation (The Burial of Casagemas)”, in which an El Greco-inspired farrago of figures surround a seemingly sainted hero swaddled in white and kissed to heaven by a prostitute.
In February 1901 Casagemas had returned to Paris alone and shot himself in front of the woman who had jilted him. Picasso later cited this event as the catalyst for his blue period. The emotional episode triggered a new and more mature aesthetic style. Mr Wright also mentions the significance of Picasso’s visits to the Saint-Lazare women’s prison later that year, which gave rise to a number of solemn portraits of women and children, two of which are presented here. Regardless of the cause, this exhibition argues that 1901 witnessed a profound change in Picasso’s art.

In “Child with a Dove”, “Harlequin and Companion” and “Seated Harlequin”, Picasso is no longer trying on his elders’ clothes. These are original works, powerfully ambiguous and created with thrilling assurance. Not all of these paintings are masterpieces, but together this exhibition dramatises a critical moment in the master’s making.

宋冬Song Dong 《三十六歷》36 Calendars 香港

《三十六歷》，既是個人史也是國史

JOYCE LAU 報道 2013年02月08日

Song Dong and the Asia Art Archive

中國藝術家宋冬和他的志願者在香港《三十六歷》的開幕式上。

香港——這從一開始就是有史以來最令人緊張不安的自發運動。宋冬的《三十六歷》被認為是群眾性的集體創作，將有幾百名普通市民參與其中。
宋先生作為香港亞洲藝術文獻庫的駐場藝術家，用了一年的時間創作了432幅素描，描述過去36年里他人生中的每一個月，每幅畫配有一篇短文。這些鉛 筆畫被複製成數碼印刷品，做成36個日曆，懸掛在空曠的ArtisTree展覽館牆上。場地中央的432張桌子上分別放着每幅畫的複製品，展覽期間公眾可 以在上面隨意添加內容。

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Song Dong and Asia Art Archive

宋先生對紐約「9/11恐怖襲擊」的描繪。

這個項目在本質上具有自由精神。但是這裡是香港，這個商業之都正憑藉著堅定的決心和雄厚的資金努力把自己變成全球“藝術中心”。結果就是如今的藝術活動有太多政府機構和公司參與，幾乎榨乾了其中的樂趣。
在1月21日的開幕式上，貴賓們品着葡萄酒，幾百個志願者在外面等候，其中包括很多中小學生。為了安撫他們，工作人員分發巧克力棒和加糖的檸檬味飲料，這個方法很受歡迎，但是並不能有效地讓孩子們保持安靜。一些上了年紀的志願者站不動了，被帶到附近的座位上。
差不多一小時後，志願者被天鵝絨圍欄圍了起來，一個組織者站在椅子上，用頭戴式麥克風向他們喊話：“從最後一排開始，按次序走到座位上。所有的書包必須放在書桌下面或後面。在右上角工整地寫下你的名字。”這場面像參加高考。
《三十六歷》可以被看作是一個明證，證明了香港作為一個中國城市，卻具有獨特的定位，這裡的公眾可以對一件藝術作品自由地發表評論，即使作品中提到 了1989年天安門廣場鎮壓事件或者諾貝爾和平獎獲得者，比如達賴喇嘛或劉曉波。但是在活動進行的此時此刻，最能證明的還是香港人耐心排隊等候的能力。
這432個低矮的黑色書桌配有黑色墊子，供人跪坐在地上，有亞洲古代書房的感覺。看起來別緻，坐着可不太舒服。年紀最大的一些參與者得到一些木凳子，凳子面也就比紙巾盒大一點。
然後就是各種發言——每個發言都相應地被翻譯成英文或中文——在發言中，贊助商們再次相互感謝。身體僵硬的觀眾開始活動雙腿。失去耐心的觀眾開始往素描上塗顏色。
宋先生出場時，觀眾的注意力被調動了起來。宋是中國最著名的概念藝術家之一。他說觀眾可以做任何事情。他們可以開心地玩，把紙撕掉，把他的心愛的作品毀掉或者扔掉。“我們開始吧！”他說這句話的時候，引發了當晚第一次真誠的掌聲。
場地上終於響起了幾百人同時工作時發出的自然的嗡嗡聲。
年輕的藝術家們在iPhone上查資料，尋找靈感，用笑臉和彩虹裝飾他們的頁面。年長的人則在上面展示自己漂亮的傳統書法。有些人不理會宋先生的素 描，另起爐灶。也有些人把他的素描完全擦去，畫上自己的作品——宋兒睿就是這麼做的，她是宋冬的女兒，很年輕，坐在後排。有些人只留下了一大堆灰色的橡皮 屑。也有人祈求耶穌基督，發表政治評論或者寫些奇怪的猥褻的話。公眾的作品是顏色的大爆炸，與宋先生的極簡主義黑白素描形成對比。
香港畫廊總監凱蒂·德·蒂莉(Katie de Tilly)在一幅畫著犯人的素描上潦草地寫道：“我想……我想……讓這個結束。”
克萊爾·莫林(Clare Morin)是緬因州波特蘭市的一位作家，她曾在香港居住過，這次是回來訪問。她畫的是被卡在高樓大廈之間的小小的抗議者。她寫下了對2003年的印象，那是黑暗的一年，香港經歷着SARS的考驗，還爆發了要求言論自由的大規模抗議。
艾未未一直是中國政府的眼中釘。他的畫像被改成了一個黑臉的惡魔在割他的喉嚨。艾先生的嘴裡冒出了一個卡通對話框，裡面寫道：“我愛中國。”在達賴喇嘛的素描上方，有人寫道：“如果你想要和平，那麼先予人和平。”
1989年6月的那一頁，也就是北京鎮壓事件的那一頁，被分配給了夏佳理(Ronald Arculli)。他是香港的一位政治、文化人物。他把6月4日的方框塗成了黑色，在6月5日的方框里用紅字寫道：“我們會記住。”
宋先生原來的素描是個頗令人意外的發現，不是因為他畫的是“坦克人”，這個是可以預見的，而是因為畫中的“坦克人”出現在中國的電視上——這種情況 在如今絕不會發生。“我當時在北京的家中，在電視上看到了這個人和坦克，”他在採訪中說，“那是在電視上。他們播放這個畫面，意思是：‘看看西方人報道的 都是些什麼’，而且對此極力譴責。”
2009年，宋先生在紐約現代藝術博物館展示了他的裝置作品《物盡其用》，他在其中展示了他過世的母親家裡的每一樣東西，從木製傢具、兩個灶眼的爐子到舊鞋子和用了一半的高露潔牙膏。
那次他是把另一個人的生活完全展示給世人，現在他是把自己的生活完全展示給世人。
《三十六歷》是對“一位年輕藝術家”的中國式“描述”。這個故事始於1978年，那時宋先生是個貧困的12歲男孩，一直講到他與藝術家尹秀珍結婚， 女兒誕生、父母去世。他特別提到20世紀80年代他初次看到波拉克和畢加索的作品，講述了他的藝術歷程，從在中國邊遠地區給購物中心繪製壁畫，到仔細研究 泰特現代美術館的每個展品。2013年，他已經是一位週遊世界的著名藝術家了，但是他仍然思慕北京的胡同，這種傳統的窄巷現在幾乎都被毀了。
讓人意外的一點是，其中的文化參照讓在西方長大的人看來也有些熟悉。20世紀70年代末四四方方的電視機，80年代的日本漫畫，90年代的大哥大。多虧了香港電視里的片段，宋先生還發現了一些奇怪的新潮流，比如“喇叭褲、超大墨鏡、長發和科幻小說”。
這個作品還帶着點幽默感。他回顧了與西式快餐漫長而不愉快的關係：他喝的第一杯可樂（後來發現是中國仿製的假貨），必勝客的至尊披薩（他覺得吃起來 “很噁心”），以及肯德基（他只在特別款待客戶時才買）。與此同時，其中還夾雜着現在看來像古代歷史般的中國現代歷史片段，比如“外匯券”，這種東西出現 在普通中國百姓不能購買外國商品的年代。
融合在這些個人記憶里的，是塑造了他這一代人的重大政治、文化事件：柏林牆的倒塌、克隆羊多麗、“9/11事件”、網絡的興起和四川地震。宋先生仔 細追溯了中國在世界上的許多“第一次”：奧林匹克獎牌、在電影節上獲獎，以及《時代》雜誌的封面。《三十六歷》既是個人歷史，也是國家歷史，追溯了中國從 文化大革命的苦難中走出來，崛起為世界強國的歷程。
《三十六歷》是否會在其他地方展出，尚未可知。當被問及是否會在中國大陸展出時，宋先生聳了聳肩，說道：“我不確定。嗯，你知道——審查制度。”亞洲藝術文獻庫將把宋先生和公眾的圖畫以及譯成英文的全部文本上傳到網站上。
這些圖像放在一起形成了一個4萬字的作品，你可以把它當成短篇小說來讀，或者作為一本圖解小說出版。當組織者被問及是否會出版時，他們警惕地回答說，假如有人把英文譯本帶出了場地，那必須儘快寄回來。

《三十六歷》。香港ArtisTree展覽館。2月8日結束。
翻譯：王艷

Chinese Artist Crosses a Line

By JOYCE LAU February 08, 2013

HONG KONG — It began as the most uptight spontaneous event ever. Song Dong’s “36 Calendars” was conceived as a mass collaborative work that would include the contributions of hundreds of ordinary citizens.
Mr. Song spent a year as the artist-in-residence at the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong creating 432 illustrations depicting every month of his life for the past 36 years, each accompanied by a short essay. The pencil drawings were copied as digital prints and made into 36 calendars, which were hung on the walls of the cavernous ArtisTree exhibition space. In the middle of the room, copies of the pages were placed on 432 desks, where the public could add anything they wanted during the opening.


The project was free-spirited at heart. But this is Hong Kong, a business city trying to turn itself into a global “art hub” with a steely determination and large amounts of cash. The result is that art events now involve so many government and corporate entities that it almost squeezes the fun out of it.
As V.I.P.’s sipped wine during the opening on Jan. 21, hundreds of volunteers, including many schoolchildren, waited outside. To appease them, staff members handed out chocolate bars and sugary lemon-flavored drinks — a welcome, if inefficient, method of making young children keep still. Some elderly participants who could stand no longer were taken to nearby seats.
After nearly an hour, the volunteers were corralled behind a velvet rope as an organizer stood on a chair and regaled them through a headset microphone: “Proceed to the desks in an orderly fashion, filing in first at the back. All school backpacks must be stored under or behind the desk. Clearly print your name in the upper right-hand corner.” It was like taking a university entrance examination.
“36 Calendars” can be seen as a testament to Hong Kong’s unique placement as a Chinese city, where the public can comment freely on an artwork that refers to events like the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown or to Nobel Peace Prize laureates like the Dalai Lama or Liu Xiaobo. But at this point in the proceedings, it was mostly a testament to Hong Kongers’ ability to wait patiently in line.
The 432 low black desks, with matching black mats for kneeling on the floor, invoked the feel of an ancient Asian scholar’s study. It was visually striking, if not very comfortable. The oldest participants were given wooden stools with seats that measured slightly larger than a tissue box.
Then there were speeches — each translated between English and Chinese — in which the sponsors, who had already thanked each other, thanked each other again. The less flexible shifted their legs. The less patient started coloring things in.
Their attention was piqued when they saw Mr. Song, one of China’s best-known conceptual artists. He said they could do anything. They could have fun, tear up the paper, destroy his work or throw it away for all he cared. “Let’s begin!” he said, to the first real applause of the evening.
Finally, the room settled into the natural buzz of hundreds of people working.
Younger artists consulted iPhones for inspiration and decorated their pages with smiley faces and rainbows. Older ones practiced beautiful traditional calligraphy. Some worked off of Mr. Song’s sketches. Others erased them entirely and painted their own works — as Song Er Rui, the artist’s young daughter did, sitting in the back row. Some left mountains of grey eraser shavings and nothing else. There were appeals to Jesus Christ, political commentary and the odd obscenity. The public’s works were an explosion of color compared with Mr. Song’s minimalist black-and-white sketches.
The Hong Kong gallery owner Katie de Tilly scrawled “I want ... I want ... it to be over” on the drawing of a prisoner.
Clare Morin, a writer in Portland, Maine, who once lived in Hong Kong and was back for a visit, drew tiny protesters stuck between high-rises. She wrote about her impressions of 2003, a dark year in which Hong Kong faced both the SARS epidemic and mass demonstrations over free speech.
A picture of Ai Weiwei, an artist who has long been a thorn in the sides of the Chinese authorities, was amended to show a black-faced demon slitting his throat. Coming out of Mr. Ai’s mouth was a cartoon bubble that read “I Love China.” Above a sketch of the Dalai Lama, someone wrote, “If you wish to experience peace, provide peace.”
The page for June 1989, the month of the Beijing crackdown, was assigned to Ronald Arculli, a political and cultural figure in Hong Kong. He filled in the square of June 4 in black, and on June 5 wrote, “We will remember” in red.
Mr. Song’s original drawing is a revelation, not because it predictably depicted the “tank man,” but because it showed him on Chinese television — something that would not happen today. “I was home in Beijing and I saw the man and the tank as it appeared on television,” he said in an interview. “It was on TV. They showed it as a statement of, ‘Look what the Western reported showed’ and tried to rebuke it.”
In 2009, Mr. Song presented his installation “Waste Not” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he displayed every single item of his late mother’s home, from wooden furniture and a two-burner stove to old shoes and half-used tubes of Colgate.
He turned someone else’s life inside out for the world to see, and now he has done the same to himself.
“36 Calendars” is something of a Chinese “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” The story begins in 1978 with Mr. Song as an impoverished 12-year-old, and continues through his marriage to the artist Yin Xiuzhen, the birth of their daughter and the deaths of his parents. He marks the first time he sees works by Pollack and Picasso in the 1980s, and recounts his own journey from painting shopping mall murals in provincial China to minutely studying every exhibit at the Tate Modern. By 2013, he is a famous artist who has traveled all over the world, but he still pines for Beijing’s hutongs, the traditional narrow alleyways that are now all but destroyed.
One surprising element is how familiar the cultural references would be to someone growing up in the West. There is a blocky television from the late 1970s, Japanese cartoons of the ’80s and enormous cellphones of the ’90s. Thanks to snippets of Hong Kong television, Mr. Song discovered strange new trends like “bell-bottomed pants, huge sunglasses, long hair and science fiction.”
The work is not without humor. He traces his long and unhappy relationship with Western fast food: His first Coca-Cola (which turned out to be a Chinese fake), the Pizza Hut Supreme (which he found “disgusting”) and KFC (which he bought only for clients as a special foreign treat). At the same time, there are glimpses of Chinese life that seem like ancient history now, like “Foreign Exchange Certificates,” from when ordinary Chinese could not buy foreign products.
Woven into these personal memories are the major political and cultural events that shaped his generation: The fall of the Berlin Wall, Dolly the cloned sheep, the Sept. 11 attacks, the rise of the Internet and the Sichuan earthquake. Mr. Song carefully tracks Chinese firsts in the world: Olympic medals, film festival honors and Time magazine covers. “36 calendars” is both a personal history and a national one, tracing China’s path from the misery of the Cultural Revolution to its rise as a global superpower.
It is unknown whether “36 Calendars” will be shown anywhere else. When asked if it would travel to the mainland, Mr. Song shrugged and said, “I’m not sure. Well, you know — censorship.” The Asia Art Archive will upload Mr. Song’s and the public’s images, as well as the full text translated into English, onto its Web site.
Taken together, the images add up to a 40,000-word work that could be read as a short novel or published as graphic novel. When the organizers were asked if that might happen, they responded in alarm that, if one of the English translations had been taken off the premises, it had to be mailed back immediately.

36 Calendars. ArtisTree, Hong Kong. Through Feb. 8.

Jason Wu 吳季剛

Jason Wu (Chinese: 吳季剛; pinyin: Wú Jìgāng; Wade–Giles: Wú Chì-Kāng; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Gô͘ Kùi-Kong; born September 27, 1982) is a Taiwanese-Canadian fashion designer based in New York City. He is most famous for designing the dresses of Michelle Obama on several occasions, including during first and second inauguration of American President Barack Obama.

（資料來源│《今周刊》主辦青年競爭力論壇與《文茜的與我們的人生故事》之吳季剛專訪）
打從一開始我就知道自己會走上設計師這條路。從小到大，我就喜歡漂亮的東西，不管是藝術品、衣服、建築，水餃也喜歡包得漂亮的，不好看的我不吃。
我五歲開始學素描、雕塑。最早的畫作是一張美人魚，九歲就深受女性柔美的線條吸引。
從小，爸媽就非常支持且培養我做喜歡的事。剛到加拿大念書時我英文不好，也不是好學生，媽媽便給了我時尚雜誌，要我讀，藉此學英文。
我想自己能成為設計師的原因是沒有受限，能去探索成為設計師是怎麼一回事；還有旅行的經驗、所受的教育以及曾獲得的鼓勵，才成就了今天的我。

自己的作品自己第一個批評
十 五歲是我設計職涯開展的起點。因為很想要實際的設計經驗，我接到的第一份設計工作，是幫（知名玩具設計商）Integrity Toys 設計娃娃。我一向是注意細節的完美主義者，想做出一流的作品。在娃娃衣服的設計上下功夫讓我注意到很多重要的小細節。我發現，問題永遠都是出在細節。細節 可以讓東西從好變到完美，小小細節累積起來就可以做出很棒的成果，完美就是這樣堆砌出來。

十八歲時我成為 Integrity Toys 的創意總監，學會如何與人工作、如何創業，同時也在申請大學。我只想申請紐約帕森設計學院，但我爸媽沒聽過這家學校，跟我再三確認，媽媽還問我要不要去念哥倫比亞大學（笑）。我說我的成績根本不達門檻，人家才不會收我。
當時覺得自己唯一的選擇是留在紐約當設計師。雖不知從何做起，但我一直努力嘗試，從來沒有讓自己有機會放棄。

最 近有個知名作家強調，你只要累積超過一萬小時的經驗，就可以把任何事做好。我今天能站在這裡，就是因為花了數不盡的小時在工作上。像任何產業一樣，時裝業 非常難進入，大家總是告訴你，你不會成功，但你必須相信自己。我從小就知道努力必定會有收穫，這是我所遵循的模式。我一直是解決問題的人，對設計也是如 此。如何把繪圖做成3D成為真的洋裝，你必須打版；該如何打摺，波浪才能看起來像繪稿那樣……這是我每天工作的一部分。

而媽媽總是提醒我， 只要能相信自己的作品，好的際遇就會隨之而來。爸媽常跟我們說：認識自己是誰，持續成為那樣的人。能在時尚界快速崛起的原因，在於我一開始就有有趣的想 法，並成功表達出來，且持續表現。我推出的每個系列，都環繞著同一個想法。有時候設計師的想法太多，推出的每個系列反而像是不同設計師的作品。我相信，認 知設計師的角色，其他的部分就會自然到位；知道自己是誰，就會做到最好。

除此之外，我也是第一個批評自己作品的人。在推出每個系列後，我都會自我反省：其實這裡可以怎麼做，那裡應該如何改，可以做得更好才對。這樣的做法激勵我成為一個更好的設計師和更好的人。對我來說，停止學習就是停止成長，這種人的作品不會進步。我不想成為那樣的設計師。

不過，我也不是一直都這麼有自信。很多時候我也會懷疑自己，這很重要，我想大家也是如此。但當我找到自我，我是真的找到了。

小 時候，我跟一般小孩很不一樣，我玩洋娃娃，運動完全不行，數學超級爛，很不像一般男孩子。現在我數學好多了，因為必須看年度會計預算（笑）。從前別人笑我 玩娃娃，我哥會站出來替我說話，他會說：「讓他當他自己吧，那樣有什麼不對？一點都沒有錯！」我很感激的是，在我知道自己是誰以前，家人就知道我是誰，這 點我以我的家人為榮。
以前在學校，我一般科目不突出，反而很會繪圖、畫畫，很有創造力。我過去做的，可能不被社會一般觀念所接受，所以那時 我沒有信心。但當我了解到，可以把注意力從不擅長的，轉移到自己擅長的地方。做到這一點後，我持續發展自己的專長、做喜歡的事，就幾乎沒有任何理由不對自 己有自信。

我想做「未來的那件衣服」
以前我最喜歡去博物館看大師做的衣服。那些衣服可能 不實穿，但一百年後看起來還是很好看、很精采。因此我想做出「未來的那件衣服」，這對我來說非常重要。這世界上有很多人在做衣服，但很少人能把感情帶出來 做成成品。我希望自己創作的不只是衣服，而是我想像中的藝術品，這也是為什麼我推出自己的品牌。

我很多朋友是現代女性，這些人都是我的靈感來源。她們都很激勵人心，不光是因為在自己的風格上既獨特又成功，也因為她們無所不能。我覺得這些都啟發了我，做出今天的設計。我裝扮每個人的終極目標是：強調並展現她最好的一面——表現最美麗的部分，凸顯女性特質。
平 時我一直在工作，每小時都在動腦、思考，因為我的工作就是創意，而創意無時不在，不是朝九晚五的工作。很幸運的是，我很愛我的工作。這很棒，因為我的人生 很美好，沒得抱怨。別人都說我真幸運，而我要說的是，我工作很認真，對於每一個機會，都付出雙倍的努力；因為運氣有限，即使是百中取一的機會，我都會盡最 大的努力。

時裝秀上，在模特兒上台前的最後一刻，我都還在做調整：這裡有一根頭髮，把褲子拉得更直，或是這裡還要加一朵花，這些都是在最後一秒做的事，不到最後不輕言結束。我要確認我端出來的，就是自己能力所及最好的。