The long-haired Kuo Wei usually dresses all in black, but his subdued appearance belies the tremendous dynamism of the mind within. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)
Conceptually driven, Kuo Wei enjoys exploring social phenomena, developing them into stories, and then transforming them into his personal designs. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)
INF’s color palette is centered on black, with only a few pops of brighter colors. That ensures that people’s attention remains focused on the other details of the design. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)
W hat would a fashion mashup of images from traditional Taiwanese banquets, general stores, Taoist spirit-journey rituals, free-diving fisherwomen and the Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival, as well as Japanese kabuki theater, look like?
Constantly surprising and delighting, Kuo Wei of the Taiwanese fashion brand INF revels in drawing creative inspiration from a diverse range of cultural phenomena.
The long-haired Kuo Wei usually dresses all in black, but his subdued appearance belies the tremendous dynamism of the mind within.
Apart from being a signature feature of his own personal style, black has also served as the main color of the INF brand, ever since Kuo, then a student in the Fashion Design Department at Shih Chien University, followed in the entrepreneurial footsteps of department alumni to found his own fashion brand, INF, in 2011.
Devoted to the avant-garde, Kuo decided early on that all of his designs would be in black. “That way,” he thought, “people could focus their attention on the details of the design.”
Transformative clothes
But Kuo explains with a laugh that the decision was later “schooled by the market.” His work has since incorporated more color, but he has stayed true to the avant-garde spirit of deconstruction, transforming garments via structural experimentation with an astonishing attention to detail.
The potential for transformation has always been central to his work. At first, these transformations involved minor modifications, such as turning long sleeves into short sleeves or long pants into shorts. But there are recent garments of his that can be worn in five different ways. A T-shirt can turn into a bag, or pants into a skirt. At once stylish and cleverly simple, these items of clothing become suitable for wearing in all seasons or even for sharing with a lover. And each transformation can be completed in under 30 seconds.
More than merely displaying creativity, Kuo believes that the transformational features of these clothes represent sustainable fashion in its purest form. Through design craftsmanship, he strives to extend each garment into as many wearable forms as possible, thereby lengthening the product’s life cycle.
How could such clothing, transforming itself at the very forefront of fashion, ever go out of style?
Immersive cultural scripts
In 2021, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, major fashion weeks shifted to online showcases. INF combined its fashion show with a short film, inviting Golden Horse Award winner Chen Shu-fang to star in Time Machine, a work addressing themes of LGBTQ identity and love. The film received widespread acclaim at New York Fashion Week and nominations at 13 film festivals all told. It went on to win eight awards.
In fact, there are common threads that make Kuo’s transition from fashion to film understandable. Guided by his own logical and meticulous mind, Kuo Wei has always been unconventional. Philosophical in approach, he enjoys using textual reading as a starting point to explore the origins and contexts behind social phenomena. He then develops these insights into stories, which culminate in his fashion designs.
He personally conceived the stories for both 2021’s Time Machine and the following year’s concept film, Translate.
Living in Taiwan, he naturally draws a wealth of creative materials from his surroundings. Themes of his work have ranged from local traditions such as guan luo yin (rituals for traveling to the spirit world), traditional general stores, the Yanshui Beehive Fireworks, outdoor banquets, and the female freedivers (ama) of Taiwan and Japan. He has also drawn inspiration from neighboring Japan, exploring themes such as kabuki theater.
As the saying goes, “The more local something is, the more international it becomes.” Some have dubbed Kuo Wei a “taike” designer. (Taike, also spelled tai-ke or taiker, was originally a derogatory term for uneducated Taiwanese people, but has later been embraced as an expression of authentic local working-class culture.) Yet despite the Hoklo grassroots flavor of his works, 70% of his sales are to international clients—particularly women from Europe, the United States, and the Middle East.
Each of his garment designs is a kind of story, one that carries the inquiries and curiosities of Kuo Wei’s mind to ever-distant horizons.
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