I’m hereby sincerely applying for your program on basis of my specialty in media production and dissemination during my undergraduate journalism, three years’ career in large media in reports of fashions, and my personal experience about advantages of international education in expanding personal horizons and enhancing the ability. I regard such international scholarship as the necessary way to materialize my professional ideal and to fulfill my personal value. For the short run in the coming two years, I expect a cutting-edge and strict graduate training in the major of fashion, and some creative exploration in the crossing field of fashion culture and fashion media. In the long run, I hope to set up a influential fashion media block.
My interest in fashion research has no business with The Devil Wears Prada, the exhibits of Jean Marc Bustamante, Sylvie Fleury, Gary Hume in Champs-Elysees, or Coco Chanel written by Catherine De Montalembert. In fact, young as I may be, I highly appreciate the ancient Greek life and advocate a lifestyle of the spiritual purity and cleanliness. My interest in fashion studies has originated in my study and life experience, my reports on several fashion programs as a cub journalist, my tour in America, France, Hong Kong and Beijing. And the idea has arisen from Chris·G·Simmel’s fashion philosophy and Joan Dejean’s The Essence of Fashion: the Elegant Taste and Luxury Life in the Age of the France of Louis XIV 14. Which has awakened me to the great significance of fashion in improving our life quality and inheriting our cultures.
My first internship in fashion occurred when I was a sophomore in university when I was luckily enrolled as the intern reporter in Beijing Olympic Games after some fiere competition. I noticed that much was reported on the tournaments and celebrities,and that the behavior and dress of sports stars, from bolt's vest to Kobe's shoes, would soon lead to street imitations. I caught some streets shots that had achieved good results.
This internship experience set me in reflection: as we're choosing among various consumptions every day, what judges the correctness of people choices? How have the changes in modern technology, especially in the media, affected the formation and diffusion of fashions? With this confusion, I try to find answers from Veblen’ Theory of the Leisure Class and Alexandra Stoddard’ Elegant Life. And finally I finished my own graduation thesis----The Influence of Social Media in Fashion, which gained the Intelligent Graduate Thesis Prize of Peking university.
And then I was driven to further exploration in this direction by the positive results and pleasure in the professional research, and by the unsolved academic problems, and got somewhat research-oriented. After graduation, I entered in the largest media group in Hubei Province to undertake fashion works of 66 million population there chiefly by taking photos of the Street fashionistas and reporting on fashion brand exhibitions. Yet deep in my heart doubts still exists just as in my undergraduate days: what leads people to follow these things? Is it the objective existence of beauty or the cultural constructs that establish people’s knowledge about beauty?
I searched answers in MOOC, in TED, and in Yale’s open courses. The lecture of “Fashion and Creating” by Isaac Mizrahi offered me some inspirations, and set me into further thinking about it. Fashion is not only personal concern to ornament and beautify themselves, nor the decoration of your own living surroundings, nor refined to the issues concerning personal existence and development ranging from the street blocks to the community, and even to the city.
It is by nature a kind of cultural phenomenon. This inspired me to the fact that if I want to be a professional reporter of fashions, I must acquire a categorized understanding of fashion, about its origin, the driving force and the internal rules, especially at such an age dominated by big data and cloud computing technologies.
For the time being, fashion identity is crucial for my study to understand how human communicate through fashion. Social media like Instagram and Piniterst has exposed Chinese people with incredibly diverse culture with creative and detailed imagery. There has been inconsonance caused by culture difference that was fascinating under the umbrella of Chinese culture.
As a member in a big family of doctors, opposite to common expectations, I haven’t become a white angel like my father, uncle, aunt and grandmother. When stills young, I dreamed of becoming a photographer, bathed in the pleasant achievements of shooting the wonderful moments.
As a high school student, I once went for photography tour in the mountains in ShenNongJia, a minority community where the amazing scenery and unique culture, the costumes and architectures shocked me to the bones. In order to expose the unique culture of the remote region to the outside world, I set up a website named “30 Degrees North Latitude” on basis of the thousands of photos I took there. It turned out a great eye-catch, and won me the Award for Scientific Innovation by Chinese Youth, the highest award for Chinese students extracurricular activities.
Much against the family will, I was enrolled into the Press Department instead of the Medical School of Peking University and as a sophomore was luckily enrolled into the “2+2 Project” of international students between Peking University and Yale University. And I benefited a lot from the compound international tuition. Further to the modern medium technologies, computer programming, website design and streaming media production in Peking University, Yale had armed me with some conceptual revolution either by its Art History or by its Product Design courses which has roused me to the truth that a qualified journalist should not only be skillful in media production, but also be well comprehensive about humanity, the society and culture, and be sensitive to new information, new events and new tendencies.
I quite cherish this opportunity and try to maintain it as a valuable episode in my journalist career for enhancing and displaying my capabilities. Unfortunately under the prevailing press filtering system in China, my words and pictures dedicated to be true, radical and critical are constantly questioned. I am therefore obliged to elbow another safer way out------to engage in reports on the fashions. Even though my university teachers, friends and family members feel sorry for my choice of career because fashion reporters in China are equaled to paparazzi lacking in human concern and vacant in ideological insight and negative in social reputation, I have chosen and will stick to it all the way, just as I abandoned medicine years ago. I believe that the luxurious items, the noble models at most people’s sight are just the most superficial elements of true fashion, and that the cultures, histories and humanity behind them are the real attraction in them. I don’t care about the comments by my surroundings on my career, but how to change their
views by my professional work.
My goal is to constantly and actively engage great artists to curate the beauty to influence the way people perceive fashion. The marvelous reputation of YOUR design school in the industry of the fashion culture, the first-class facility and curriculum are the greatest attraction to me. I believe I can contribute to your program with my imagination and innovation, and I also believe YOUR school is the necessary way for me to acquire further knowledge and to cultivate my capability and to achieve career development, and that I will be your pride some day.