Born and raised in China, Ying showed artistic talent at 2 years old, watching her architect Grandfather doing water colours. Going to school she began winning creative painting competitions. Made to study Finance by her parents, she realised art was her true calling.

After completing her studies she stayed in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau for 2 years where she investigated folk cultures and recorded her experiences by painting. Then she attended the Wuhan University of Textiles studying fashion design. This trip developed her acute sense of colour and she expresses feelings through different colour combinations and numerous tones.

In her second year she created a collection entitled “Qinghai, a Dreamed Paradise”, which won the Golden Medal at the Chinese Young Fashion Designers contest. She chose knitwear because she wanted special fabrics with many colours and textures. This stirred the imagination of China’s fashion circles and was reported on China’s Central TV News and interviewed by the leading media in China and Hong Kong.

Because of her success, she obtained a working position with Stoll in Shanghai/Beijing as a fashion consultant. Her knowledge of knitting technology was improved by learning programming for 2 years. This changed her design concept, during her time in China’s fashion industry, always trying to apply her theory into practice.

In 2003 she was awarded a scholarship from Birmingham City University and came to England for a Masters degree, researching computerised knitting technologies in fashion design. Her final project ‘Underground’ acquired sponsorship from Stoll. After graduation, she worked in Leicester for knitwear manufacturers Jack Masters. In 2007, she studied the Shima Seiki SDS-ONE knitwear design system in Japan.

10 years knitting technologies knowledge enables her to plan her knitwear design in advance; She begins her design process with the knitting structure, utilising cutting theory to create shapes that are combined in the overall structure of the garment. She specialises in the applications of multi-gauge, multi-layer and seamless areas of CAD knitting technologies. She is looking forward to building on these areas with more challenging methods so she can keep her designs fresh and exciting.

Brand description/ philosophy

Chen Ying Design is an independent knitwear design and technology consultancy based in Nottingham, UK. With many years experience of working and research, we are now cooperating with the German Stoll CAD knitting Technology centre in the UK, providing innovative knitwear designs.

Tassel [Ying] is a women’s knitwear brand launched in 2008 and has been successful on the ASOS website and the Laden Showroom in London. It is inspired by life experiences taken from Tibet to Europe. Aiming to create cutting-edge knitwear pieces, interpreting the fusion of cultures between folk to urban, east to west with the handmade looks fulfilled by CAD knitting technologies. Tassel [ying] is now stocked at the prestigious Wolf & Badger store in Mayfair, London.

The 2013 Summer/Spring collection Underground was developed from a previous MA project. It is an experiment in pushing the boundaries of knitwear design by transferring the inspiration into every stitch and shape employed in a computer programming process. Our design signatures are multi-gauge inter-weaved textures and multi-layer sculptural knitting structures.

This collection is Ying’s impression ‬of Britain’s Industrial Revolution; the Underground being the best representation. She took a lot of photos of London undergrounds Baker Street that is on the Metropolitan Line. It is the first underground line in the city built on 1863 and it has over 150 years history. The underground is not just a symbol of London but also turned out to be an urban landscape. The de-constructed vibe is actually an impression from the underground station. London underground is not like the newly built underground lines in other cities, Ying can feel the industrial primitive power of Industrial Revolution, which has made Britain the country that it is. She can feel the same energy when I travelled to Tibet.