Artist Spotlight with Meredith Liu

Artist Spotlight: MEREDITH LIU

When you had your fashion show, COVID-19 had already hit and the show was online. In it, you talked about beauty amidst brokenness, that nothing is irredeemable. Now that more time has passed, and more unrest has occurred, how are you thinking about the themes that inspired your collection?

Meredith is a recent graduate of WashU’s class of 2020, and she is a recipient of a BFA in Fashion Design. She was working on her capstone project, “Restoration,” when COVID-19 interrupted her senior spring. We did an interview with Meredith via Zoom to see how the theme of her project relates to our theme, “Reconcile.”

Initially, my capstone was supposed to be a six-piece evening wear collection. Each look represented a snapshot of the transformation from brokenness to redemption. The first looks used laser cutting and dark fabric to convey a sense of moodiness and decay. Through a progression to lighter fabric and gold embellishment, the collection was meant to show a path of healing, celebrating the scars and a new, redeemed state. But when COVID-19 happened, I only had four finished garments of the six, with the middle two missing. The result felt more like two separate collections that had very different visual languages; there wasn’t that seamless integration of all the different components as they healed and welded together.

If you could travel back in time to when you began your collection, before COVID-19 hit, what would you most want to tell your past self?

If I could do it again, I probably would have made four looks that were each within themselves their own journey of brokenness and healing, rather than each one being its own stage in a progression.

How does your identity as a Christian and recent graduate affect how you view your collection?

I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that ultimately God is steering the ship, and if he doesn’t want you to go somewhere, you’re going to go somewhere else. I had originally thought my portfolio would help launch my career in New York City, but, frankly, the final result does not look as professional as it could have been if I had been able to stay in St. Louis and utilize the resources I had at WashU. I had to forfeit the additional laser cutting, runway show, live models, and professional photography, and instead have pictures I took in my living room on a fiberglass mannequin.

You kind of just have to take it in stride and have faith that you know God’s not going to let you drown. So, it’s not that I’m anxious, but I’m just left thinking, “What just happened? What is my life? I’m living with my parents after graduation... here we are.”

I think it’s forcing me to come to terms with my lack of control of my own narrative. There’s no room for vanity when a global pandemic and racial tensions explode. The world is just broken, and I can do what I can to bring beauty to it.

The idea of kintsugi, of binding broken pieces of pottery together with gold lacquer, is an incredibly appealing metaphorical image for our current situation of global unrest. How are you thinking about the themes that inspired your collection in terms of your own journey recently, and what are your thoughts on the possibility of restoration for our current situation, either on a personal or on a societal scale?

Actually, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting—obviously in quarantine you have a

“Now I am able to apply the hope of the restoration that I felt from it to other scenarios where I feel hopeless”

lot of time to reflect—and I’m honestly more peaceful now than I’ve been in four or five years. I think some of it is from the realization that you can hit nearly rock bottom, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the story. I think I lived through something that felt like my personal rock bottom a few years ago. Now I am able to apply the hope of the restoration that I felt from it to other scenarios where I feel hopeless or like I’m hitting a bad place.

There are times when it’s just really bad, and I think, through it all, I have evidence that God didn’t abandon me. There’s this hope that He can use those pains to make things grow and to teach you lessons and to make you stronger. It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to hit difficult points again, but you have a broader perspective and new intel to equip you the next time something happens. The situation could be totally different and totally not relevant to the next rough patch, but you have the memory of God using something for your good, and you have evidence that you grew from something painful.

Can you tell me more about the music that Cole Reyes made for your runway show? I think it’s a really special component to your collection.

Through the Creative Collaborations Grant, Cole and I received money to professionally record music for my run-

way show. It was going to be this really cool collaboration where we would each intellectually engage with the concept of brokenness and restoration in our respective art forms—music and fashion— and make thematically analogous works. It honestly would have worked out really well on the runway, and I was sad that it didn’t really get highlighted that much in the official WUSTL Fashion Live Stream.

If you’re not able to spend your time making art, does it change how you see your identity and do you have any other outlets for creativity? What is that experience like right now?

I have conversations with people. I feel like there’s a creative outlet in having conversations, learning about what makes other people tick and sharing about art, music, food. I think meeting new people is an art in a sense; you’re building bridges between strangers, and there’s a craft to it. Building relationships is so important, especially now, because everybody is shuffled from where they thought they would be.

I’ve also been trying to stay connected to people by sending mail! I bought a bunch of watercolor blank stationary, and I’ve been mailing people painted envelopes, which has been a really fun outlet for both communication and art.

See more of Meredith’s work: meredithliu.com @meredithliu_fashion

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