Lovely Allergen

Chapter 72: To Fall Sick from Yearning

After being given their theme, the law school's design team came together many times to discuss ideas.

They pulled together numerous photos that had to do with rain, as well as any related designs and runway shows in the fashion industry. Chen Pi was a particularly attentive and careful person despite all his talk of 'stirring up water' — he secretly inquired about all the possible judges who could appear and looked up their previous works in order to examine their preferences.

"I've organised all of our previous inspiration and rough drafts into this little booklet." Xiao Qi walked over meekly and gave everyone a small book.

Yue Zhishi was currently immersed in his thoughts, but he still shot her an appreciative smile as soon as he saw what she was giving him. "You're awesome."

Even though Xiao Qi still spoke softly and weakly, she did things more confidently after being encouraged.

"I feel like our designs need to lean towards the soft, graceful style. A bit more 'celestial heavenly being'." Zhou Yi shuffled the sketches he had next to him. "Yup. Since whenever I think of rain, I always think of the misty, smoky rain in the area south of the Yangtze River."

"That style's too outdated now." Qu Zhi expressed her opinion very straightforwardly. "If we design to that style, then we'll bump into the team with the 'Chinese traditional wear' theme."

Zhou Yi gloomily said, okay. Xiao Qi then cautiously raised her hand. "Then, what about if we start from fabrics?"

"Fabrics? Stuff like polyester and nylon?" Chen Pi asked, twirling a pen.

Xiao Qi very rapidly sketched a rough design on her drawing paper and showed it to them. It was a long dress, and the bustle was replaced with the usually drawn on ancient Chinese umbrellas. "For example, we could use oilskin or a similar fabric on the dress as an embellishment..."

Qu Zhi nodded. "We could also use nylon or transparent plastic materials to design a raincoat-like suit. It should look pretty fashionable."

"But if we do that..." Nan Jia pulled out a tiny query. "Wouldn't our theme diverge from rain to umbrella? And I still can't see a clear structure to our designs. I feel like all of the ideas everyone's been giving out — like using the fabric and structure of umbrellas, the colour and texture of rainwater or people's psychological feelings during the rain — all of those ideas lean more towards our final presentation of our collection."

Zhou Yi scratched his head as well. "There's no thread running through them. The ideas are all very scattered around."

"Yes." Nan Jia pointed out something rather important. "If the fashion show requires three rounds, then there should be at least three different secondary concepts linked to our main theme. Or else we'll be really disadvantaged during the actual show."

"Our theme doesn't have an exact scope to it like the 'millennium' or 'Chinese traditional wear' themes anyway. It'll be really hard to have a concept for each of the three rounds in our collection." Releasing a very loud sigh, Chen Pi found their theme more and more troublesome. "Ah, I'm so annoyed. Let's just destroy everything."

Yue Zhishi was focused on flipping through that the little booklet, and he stood out for being so quiet during the discussion. He stared at some of the sketches they'd drawn before, and realised both Xiao Qi and Zhou Yi's designs tended to be rather traditional, presenting the lasting appeal of Chinese culture; their works had elements from water sleeves, and bamboo hats. Chen Pi and Qu Zhi's works were clearly modern — perhaps even postmodern — with their nylon fabrics and elements made out of transparent plastic materials. Qu Zhi was especially so; a large majority of her designs were grey or black, and they were combined with bright, highly contrasted fluorescent green, blue and red colours. Her style was clear and distinctive.