CHRISTINE PHUNG

Friday, March 1, 2013
Designer’s Apartments

Christine Phung was 1 of 12 young designers selected by the French Federation of Couture to present her collection at the Designer Apartments this season. Her passions of architecture, photography, nature, art and colors with innovative forms, cuts, and prints were explored through her creations. Having an enormous pride in her duo ethnicity, she expressed this in every step of her collection, with her shapes and designs that are inspired by both Cambodian and French cultures.  She binds the two heritages together by manufacturing in both countries through small workshops and her studio in Paris.

This, her 3^rd season showing at PFW, her inspiration tells the story of a girl who flies over the Nevada fields, looking down at the round shapes which correspond to the perimeter of irrigation in the desert. Presented were round printed and pieced applications in draped dresses, short gathered skirts, and sculptured jackets and coats, which were constructed and deconstructed. With a completely new approach to digital printing than many other designers, she offered innovative art prints by redistributing their layout and altering their appearance. Her modern and refreshingly new patchwork ensembles were wonderfully executed, and far more sophisticated than your grandmother’s patchwork quilts. Additionally there were a few heavily encrusted beaded items, incredibly beautiful, and by far, much more captivating to see in person. A photograph only minimally captured the amazement of theses pieces.

Having worked with several great powerhouses like Vanessa Bruno, Chloe, Lacoste, Christophe Lemaire, and graduating from both Duperre and IFM, she has had an extensive and thorough training with which to launch her own brand. Ms Phung has a fresh vision and combines her ethnic influences, while seamlessly fusing together the old world crafts with new world technologies, and explores her designs through an ethical, functional, and consciously beautiful aesthetic.

- Elise Goldberg Santiago

site de TheFashionList

Making-of, shooting of the new collection Fall-Winter 2013-2014, with the photographer Grégoire Alexandre.

The new collection Fall-Winter 13-14 “Round Fields” is a collection between tension and release, between straight lines and curves. Inspired by a traveller immersed in a mid-flight daydream, Christine Phung imagines facing the emptiness and vertigo above the circular fields of Nevada. A playful and dreamy experience, a test of one’s sense of self and one’s limits.