Designer Emily Xiaodan Yu unveils her latest book while trying to promote lingerie culture in China. Sun Yuanqing reports.

Fashion designer Emily Xiaodan Yu, who went to learn and earn in New York more than a decade ago, has unveiled her latest book: On and Beyond, A View on Fashion by a New York Designer. The book is based on columns she wrote for Shanghai-based The Bund magazine in the past two years, during which she spoke of well-kept secrets of many outlet stores, the fallout from fashion world's fast pace and questioned the hesitation toward Chinese-made products, among other issues. "Consumers have the right to know about the outlet stores, so they can choose for themselves. The brands need to know it's more important to make clear 'made by whom' rather than 'made in where', so they can position themselves better," says Yu, 48.

Literary critic Li Tuo says Yu offers a very different perspective as an insider.

"People see fashion, but they don't always see the empire. The book talks about the fashion empire and its secrets, and the secrets of buying and selling," he says.

While the industry has given Yu the insight, expertise and resources, its mass-production nature hasn't always allowed her to create what she wanted as a trained lingerie designer - delicate pieces with attention to detail.

She founded her own made-to-order label emily yu last year and has so far launched three nightwear collections.

One of them is inspired by the 19th century, when young women spent their whole youth working on their dowries with linens as the staple. It was basically their "Facebook", Yu says.

Her collection is made with delicate linen and decorated with Italian lace and embroidered Japanese silk ribbon. The fabric is manually dyed in small quantities with tea in Yu's New York home studio. A variety of tea leaves that were soaked for different lengths of time give it rich fragrance and natural colors.

Yu says on her website that the brand is attached to a strong classical feeling, and all the items are made by her, including designing, tailoring, stitching and embroidering. She accepts small orders only, and one order usually takes a month to finish.

Although her income from the brand is not comparable to what she earlier earned as a designer in big fashion houses, she enjoys the freedom to create "beautiful things and the interactions with her clients".

"I have designed for more than 10 years and this time is so different. I have never had such personal interactions with my customers. They can feel my stitches and threads, and I feel their surprise and happiness. I can't even call them 'customers' any more, they are more than that," Yu wrote on her blog after hearing that one of her customers liked her lingerie so much that she teased, she wouldn't let her husband hold her.

A Beijing native, Yu was already known for translating Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and Raymond Carver's short stories that greatly influenced China's literary circles in the late 1980s and early '90s. She was an editor of foreign literature at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences before moving to New York with her husband in 1996.

Yu then enrolled into the Fashion Institute of Technology with very little knowledge of the industry.

After graduating in fashion design in 1999, Yu worked for top-notch lingerie companies in the United States, providing designs to such brands as Maidenform, Elle Sleep, Vanity Fair Sleep and Vera Wang Princess.

While working as a fashion designer, Yu continued to write. Her first novel, Love of the 1980s was published in 2009. Then came Beauty Within: Notebooks of a Lingerie Designer from New York in 2011, and Taste and Flavor of New York in 2012. All of the books are in Chinese.

While Yu has been following her heart in straddling the realms of translation, designing and writing, she has been careful to keep a steady source of income. For instance, when she decided to quit her job as a full-time designer and start her own label, she made sure she had freelance projects for support.

She also worked as a part-time translator to support her studies in New York. Yu says her success at the time was partly due to "the openness and prosperity of '90s New York".

She has a word of caution for aspiring designers, though. "If you really want to do it, give it a try and see if you can. Make some clothes, knit a sweater, and if people like it, you have better reasons to start," Yu says.

She is also an avid promoter of the lingerie culture, which is still nascent in China.

Her next book, Lessons in Lingerie, deals with the subject and will feature illustrations from emyli yu. It is due out next year.

Contact the writer at sunyuanqing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 10/14/2014 page20)