Pengpai Yu, Exam Paper Airplane, 2026

This collection explores how Chinese students are shaped by discipline, standardization, and control—while constantly finding ways to resist through playful, instinctive, and often childlike gestures. From uniforms and regulated appearances to high-pressure exams, systems of control attempt to produce obedience, yet doodles, altered garments, and exam papers folded into paper airplanes reveal a persistent desire for freedom. Rather than focusing on oppression itself, Exam Paper Airplane looks at how rules are reworked, occupied, and played with from within. Distorted uniforms, exam paper prints, and displaced structures transform symbols of pressure into expressions of spontaneity, humor, and defiance. Finding space within constraints, and generating freedom within order.

The Design Show

The Design Show features garments, accessories, lookbooks, fragrances, and portfolio work, offering visitors an opportunity to engage with both the finished collections and the creative processes behind them. Together, these presentations reveal the breadth of ideas, approaches, and perspectives that define the Fashion Design Class of 2026.

The work on view reflects the creativity, rigor, and vision of a new generation of designers shaping the future of fashion through thoughtful and engaged practice.