For Designer Grace Gui, Home is Where the Heart Is

It takes a special kind of artist to see the potential in a dormant textile or material and to breathe life into it with ease. But it takes an especially astute artist to see the potential in natural, unexpected resources — to look at a butterfly cocoon and envision its second purpose as a stylistic embellishment. Grace Wang possesses this unmatched ability. Her pieces are always more than meets the eye, and her creative possibilities are unbridled — because her imagination is just as uninhibited.

Hypebae first met with Grace in her Brooklyn studio over a year ago. She was just about to graduate from FIT, where she was studying for her Associate's degree in Fashion Design, and had delved full steam ahead into her farm-to-fashion-based knitwear project, Grace Gui. Wang grew up in suburban New Jersey, surrounded by farm land. She fostered an appreciation for the introspective peace she found when immersed in the outdoors, and even helped tend to livestock and assisted her grandmother in raising her own silkworms.

"Growing up, I used to go back to China and visit my grandpa in Shanghai. He would always make these beautiful ink paintings. Even now, looking back on it, that was my only experience of art within my family. I remember watching him dissolve his ink in the water and the beautiful patterns that they would produce. So, I took those motifs and put them in this collection," she shared.

Wang continued, "Growing up raising silkworms with my grandmother is a big inspiration and always ties into my work. Putting that in the art and combining it with my grandfather's aesthetics and traditional Chinese aesthetics was a huge part of the resort collection, while putting a fresher perspective on it through the lens of fiber work and swimwear."

The farm was a place of solace for Wang, who often felt conflicted in many other spaces she occupied while growing up, like school. In the vast hallways, she was surrounded by a culture different than the one she grew up with, and at home, she'd study Chinese poetry and art. She battled with conflating her heritage with her current, homogenous setting — in merging her Eastern influences with her Western surroundings. But little did she know, just a few years later, this push and pull would be one of the main inspirations behind her brand.

Now, Wang uses her heritage as a strong source of inspiration. She curates a distinct blend of traditional Chinese influences merged with an Americana essence, creating an aesthetic that is uniquely Grace Gui. Not only is her vision one-of-one — it is the culmination of all of her own personal experiences and memories — but her process also exists in a class of its own. Wang continually honors her roots and only sources from small female farmers, with all pieces being produced in the United States.

 

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On her sourcing process for this collection, she shares: "I recently met a farmer in North Carolina. She does all of her silk farming, and she uses this type of yarn that most people don't like to use. And it's called Ahimsa and it's a different process. Instead of boiling the cocoon with a worm inside, she lets them all hatch, and then she makes the cocoons that have been hatched already into yarn. I absolutely adore her. You get to have luxurious silk, but at the same time, it's ethically and locally sourced."

This dedication to working with local farmers has allowed many close relationships to flourish. She is also closely connected with cultivators who shear Wensleydale lamb, Teeswater sheep and angora goats. These raw materials often act as the canvas from which Wang builds up, yielding pieces that are unlike any other handknit garments. Wang is a huge proponent of maintaining zero-waste as well, often reusing or repurposing her own scraps. This resourcefulness assures that each piece is truly one of one.

When she isn't sourcing materials from female farmers and artisans, she even raises some of her own silkworms and angora rabbits in her studio. Each piece of hers is also knit or felted by hand, and her felting technique is patented, taking farm-to-fashion to the extreme.

These materials have been part of about four collections so far, and Wang just participated in her first New York Fashion Week last season, debuting a collection of intricate floor length skirts and matching tops, long gowns, mini bubble skirts, and more. The Grace Gui Fall/Winter 2025 range was inspired by her upbringing and is titled, "Will You Carry Your Inheritance Forward?"

Now that she's ticked NYFW off of her shrinking bucket list, she's moved on to her next range: Grace Gui Resort 2025. The collection is a tribute to memory and material — two things that are instrumental in her unmatched production process. As she mentioned, it calls to past experiences of Wang watching her grandfather paint as a child, displaying patterns that were inspired by the look of ink dissolving in water. The assortment includes knit bikinis, crafted from 100% Ahimsa (peace) silk. Each made-to-order, zero-waste piece is also embroidered with real, naturally-dyed silk cocoons, a motif that Wang often embeds into her garments.

"For this collection, specifically, each motif, every single textile, every detail, I was able to sit down and think about it and execute it in a way where I'm really proud of it. It's representative of just exactly who we are as a brand this time. We're experimenting more with the silkworms and we're equipping my whole studio with incubators."

As for what's next? She concludes, "I don't want to say too much about what's coming, but the hint that I'll drop is that we're experimenting a lot."

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