The Bite Magazine - Spring/Summer 2025 - Issue 37

bitefashion reclaiming narrative control. Rather than conforming to Western expectations of ‘Asian aesthetics’, creatives like Kuo Wei are using their platforms to explore what it means to be modern, diasporic, and rooted. INF has showcased collections at New York and London Fashion Week and consistently presented runway shows at Taipei Fashion Week for the past five years. Its AW21 ‘Time Machine’ collection presented during New York Fashion Week was accompanied by a cinematic fashion film set in a nostalgic Taiwanese general store starring Chen Shu-fang, the Golden Horse Award-winning actress. It explored LGBTQ+ themes, which earned the Gold Award at Germany’s Female Voices Film Festival. The collection is accompanied by a haunting revival of ‘A Reading of First Love’, which was performed by Taiwanese singer Chuan Chuan. It visually fused retro Taiwanese iconography with grunge aesthetics and postmodern black humour. It drew inspiration from David Carson, the father of grunge typography, and infused the garments with rebellion and unfinished beauty. Standout pieces included transformable padded coats, multilayered shirts, and grunge-style hakama pants with pleated-back long shirts. Inspired by the Taiwanese cult classic animated film Grandma and Her Ghost, INF titled its SS22 collection ‘Translate’. It reimagined traditional religious and folk ghost motifs into colourful, calligraphy-style patterns, using montage techniques borrowed from cinema to layer meaning and memory. American artist Alexa Meade’s ability to make 3D figures appear 2D inspired the brand’s visual trickery. Garments were designed to play with light and shadow, creating a surreal 2D/3D effect between illustration and reality. True to the brand’s ethos, the collection featured gar- ments with transformable elements, such as shirts with layered flaps, trousers with pleated overlays, and cropped tops with adjustable straps. The styling mixed masculine tailoring with delicate sensitivity, combining mini skirts with structured shirts and stockings with suits, creating an intimate and defiant tension. INF’s signature black was re- imagined through architectural cuts and layered textures. Presented as the opening show of Taipei Fashion Week, INF’s AW22 ‘Existence’ collection explored the philosoph- ical question: What does it mean to exist? Wei framed the collection around the metaphor of a physical book, drawing parallels between their uneditable nature and the human experience. The show was staged in the library of Shih Chien University, reinforcing the idea of shared knowledge and the coexistence of countless ‘souls’ in one space. The garments echoed the geometry of books with layered folds, tab-like flaps, and square silhouettes mimicking bookmarks and page corners. The signature monochrome collection leaned into structured tailoring with a literary twist of deconstructed coats with lapel straps, cutout Images courtesy of Black PR