Clara Chandra

Grey Sheep

https://www.instagram.com/clara_meiyolachandra/

Location

new york / united states

University

academy of art university san francisco

Graduation year

2019

Contact

Clara graduated from Academy of Art University in 2019. Hailing from Indonesia, she is fascinated by diverse and open art scene in San Francisco. Clara enjoys activities that encourage creativity and observation. She is inspired by architectures, photographies, and nature because she always looks to implement beauty, graphics, contrasts, and colors into her collections.
As a designer, she focuses on designing womenswear that flatter woman’s body. She likes to incorporate colors, fabric manipulations, and other skills she learnt into her collections.
Her objective is to produce beautiful and unique pieces of clothing that people can wear timelessly. Sustainability and ethics are valuable qualities that she appreciates and intends to apply to her current and future collections.

Latest Collection

Identify

This collection is about my identity as a Chinese Indonesian. FX Harsono's "Writing in the Rain" served as the starting point. Him writing his Chinese name on the glass which kept being erased by the rain, reminded me of the forced assimilation from the New Order government. This affected my family, and in this case my mother and her siblings. My mother had to erase her Chinese identity by changing her Chinese name into a more Indonesian sounding name. I stumbled upon her old pictures when I went back home last summer, and it made me wonder about how one lived in that era of suppression and confusion. The pictures act as my inspiration as they showed the life my mother lived and how it became a piece of my identity.

This is a collaborative project with Jack Gunnin, who did the prints. The color palette and prints were inspired from the national flower of Indonesia, the moon orchid.