“It’s fascinating for me to see what happens when taking things out of the room they were built for.”

My work moves visual languages — streetwear codes, retail display systems, tactical hardware — into contexts they weren’t designed for, and watches what changes.

Eric (Yichen) Zhang

Design happens at the point of displacement
01 “Culture” & “Rebellion”
Off-White™
Project Manual Book
February, 13th, 2025
San Francisco, US
Spaceship Earth, an “imaginary experience”

“Culture” & “Rebellion”

Off-White™ Spring/Summer 2025
MA Thesis · Academy of Art University · 2025

RoleArt Direction · Styling · Sourcing

WardrobeSourced secondhand in San Francisco

Looks built11 · three shot

01

Brain storming · Format · Process

First page of notes — “displacement” underlined

The format

Built as a manual — the kind that comes in the box when you buy something. Contents, numbered sections, specifications. A campaign doesn’t normally arrive in this format. That is the point.

The argument

Off-White was founded to find the grey area between streetwear and high fashion. This campaign treats the brand as a movement rather than a label — something you can belong to without owning a piece.

Reference

Off-White’s own show notes, the publication the house used to document its collections. I borrowed its grammar and ran a full campaign through it.

  • Brand analysis
  • Creative brief
  • Concept
  • Sourcing
  • Styling
  • Shoot
  • Layout
02

Brand analysis

Abloh founded Pyrex Vision in 2012 — more art project than fashion brand, screen-printing vintage flannels and sweatshirts. Off-White launched the same year in Milan: graphic-heavy apparel, industrial design language, diagonal stripes and quotation marks.

Those elements isolated the brand from everything around it, and the Nike, IKEA and Levi’s collaborations pushed it into the mainstream.

FounderVirgil Abloh
Now led byIbrahim “Ib” Kamara
Founded2012 · Milan, Italy
ProductionMen’s & Women’s & Kid’s RTW · homeware · fragrance · jewelry · accessories
CollabsNike · IKEA · Levi’s · Jimmy Choo · Moncler · Evian · Chrome Hearts · SSENSE
Reference board as laid out in the manual
03

Inspiration board

Show notes × product manual

A house documenting itself in the language of manufacturing paperwork, paired with the booklet in the box that nobody reads. I ran the brand’s vocabulary through it — hazard yellow, varsity blue, quotation marks, industrial hardware — and built every look from secondhand racks. What came out is a manual for a collection that was never manufactured.

Inspiration board as laid out in the manual
04

Design elements

Typefaces
Italian Typewriter · document
Bahnschrift · utility
Bell MT · display
Colour identity

Pantone 12-0704 TCX

Dominant

The name itself. The gap between black and white, made literal. Used as ground — hoodies, negative space, the page.

Pantone Reflex Blue C

Primary

The purest blue a screen can make and print can only approximate. A native digital colour, borrowed into a physical object.

Pantone 13-0858 TCX

Accent

Hazard tape, construction signage, the varsity sleeve. A colour designed to warn people, reassigned to sell clothes.

05

Look book briefs

Eight written before sourcing · three shot
No. 1

Model centred in a vast, dimly lit industrial warehouse. Oversized jacket with the diagonal stripes over a white graphic tee and tailored cargos. Single overhead spotlight, sharp shadows.

No. 2

Close-up on hands holding a bag with the zip-tie tag against its minimalist body. Hands slightly blurred so the hardware carries. Blurred cityscape at dusk behind.

No. 3

Two models against a graffiti wall in an alley. One in royal blue and distressed denim, one in a striped blazer over a single-colour tee and track pants.

No. 4

Minimalist studio. Asymmetrical cuts with a diagonal stripe worked into the pattern. Stark white wall, mannequins echoing the silhouette, hard shadow.

No. 5

A sneaker on an upward-facing mirror against pure black, angled to show the deconstructed build and neon zip-tie. The mirror as duality.

No. 6

Fragrance bottle on weathered concrete. Clean glass and black cap against grey grit, soft side light on the contours.

No. 7

Model mid-stride on a city street at night in royal blue with reflective detail. Light streaks behind — motion, progress, the collection tied to city life.

No. 8

Face half obscured by branded shades. Stark white studio cut by a single diagonal stripe. Dramatic light on the hoodie’s texture.

06

Garment list

Every piece sourced secondhand in San Francisco
Blue / Yellow
Baseball Jacket
Cotton, leather, polyester
Vintage
White
Hoodie w/ zipper
Cotton
Off-White™
Yellow
Long Sleeve Shirt
Cotton
Off-White™
Brown / Orange
Racing / Truck Cap
Cotton
Chase Authentics
Black
Utility Shirt
Cotton
Dickies
Yellow / Black
Moto Jacket
Leather, polyester
Urban Outfitters
Desert Camo
Cargo Pants
Cotton
Vintage
White / Orange
Sunglasses
Plastic, acrylic
Loewe
Black
Tee w/ art design
Cotton
Vintage
Orange
Hoodie
Cotton
Fear of God
Yellow
Denim Trouser
Cotton
Dickies
Blue
Denim w/ side flares
Cotton
Levi’s
07

Look line-up 01–11

Styled on the form before the shoot
Look 01
Look 02
Look 03
Look 04
Look 05
Look 06
Look 07
Look 08
Look 09
Look 10
Look 11

Eleven built. Three made it to camera.

08

Plates

Studio, San Francisco
Campaign spread — hoodie / eyewear
Look 01VarsityBlue ground, hazard-yellow sleeve
OW / 01
OW / 02
Look 02HoodieNear-black studio, single source
OW / 03
OW / 04
OW / 05
Look 03MotoHazard tape, mailing tube, racing cap
OW / 06
OW / 07
OW / 08
OW / 09
TreatmentDuotoneReflex Blue pushed to the edge of the process
OW / 10
OW / 11
09

Credits

Art Director

Eric Zhang

Stylist

Eric Zhang

Photographer

Boris Sandoval

Model

Eric Zhang

Hair / Makeup

Alice Zhu

Assistant

Alice Zhu

The booked model cancelled the week of the shoot. I stood in and shot it in the school studio.

02 Wilderness Revival
Wilderness Revival
Field Record Book
October, 15th, 2024
San Francisco, US
Eucalyptus globulus Planted 1853 · Never harvested

Feral

Fashion Editorial · 70s Revival
MA Coursework · Academy of Art University · 2024

RoleStylist · Art Director

LocationEucalyptus grove, Golden Gate Park

SetupsAvailable · flash · drag

01

Substrate

Bark sheds in ribbons — the trunk is never one colour for long

The grove

Imported from Tasmania in the 1850s, planted by the acre in the 1870s as a timber crop. The wood twisted as it dried and the trees needed centuries to be worth cutting, so nobody came back for them. An unharvested crop that kept growing.

The clothes

The leisure suit was invented in 1970 to sell a fabric. A shirt-shaped jacket with matching trousers, made to demonstrate a new double-knit polyester. Never accepted as business dress. It sold anyway, peaked, then became shorthand for the decade.

Feral

Not wild. Feral means it was domesticated first. This shoot photographs that condition twice, once as a forest and once as a wardrobe.

  • Research
  • Concept
  • Scouting
  • Casting
  • Sourcing
  • Styling
  • Shoot
02

Inspiration board · Colour

Mail-order catalogue × herbarium sheet

Two ways of recording something already out of circulation: the flat layouts, letter codes and page numbers the seventies sold itself with, and the form a plant gets filled out on once it has been collected. The garment credits are set as a catalogue listing, and the grove is entered as a specimen.

Inspiration board as laid out in the field book
Colour identity

The Off-White chapter borrowed a colour the physical world cannot make. This one goes the other way: every colour is sampled off an object that was in the frame.

Pantone 5535 C · sampled leaf

Dominant

Sampled from a blue gum leaf, not from a screen. The wax bloom keeps the green permanently under grey.

Sampled garment

Primary

The blazer runs through half the frames. Red and blue on a grid is how the catalogue sold a suit to a man who was not buying one.

Pantone 7401 C

Accent

The sequin jacket. The most manufactured thing in the wardrobe, carried into the woods. The whole argument fits in one garment.

03

Pose board · Lighting board

Pose board
Pose board as laid out in the field book

What changes

Arms held away from the body so the sleeve and jacket line stay visible. Weight thrown to one side because a flare does not read standing still. Shirt open because the shirt underneath was also for sale. What looks like attitude is a photographer solving how to sell three garments in one frame.

 

Performed in a grove, the same posture has no buyer. The body still addresses a camera that used to be a counter. The pose outlived its purpose, which is the condition this whole chapter is about.

Lighting board
Available-light references

Catalogue lighting was flat and even. Nothing in shadow, because everything in the frame had a price beside it. This shoot inverts that: the available light lets the grove take half the frame back, and the flash keeps the catalogue’s habit of lighting the product cleanly, then deletes the context it was supposed to sit in.

04

Location scout

Golden Gate Park · on foot, one afternoon, phone camera

Option A — The plaza

Fountain, benches, paved circle, bike share dock. Groomed, symmetrical, and full of furniture. Legible as a park in every frame.

Option B — The underpass

Concrete tunnel, graffiti, handrail, wood chips. The strongest texture of the three and the only one that admits the city outright. Rejected: it argues with the wardrobe instead of holding it.

Option C — The grove

Eucalyptus, ivy, deep litter, no sightline to a building from most angles. The only location that fills a frame without furniture in it.

Selected

The test

Fill a frame with no bench, no sign, no railing in it. Hold a seventies silhouette without turning it into a costume. Be reachable on foot with no permit and no crew. The plaza failed the first, the underpass failed the second, the grove passed all three.

Method

Every angle photographed, including the ones that failed. The failures are why the selection is defensible. Golden Gate Park was three quarters dune — the wildness is almost entirely man-made.

05

Plate 01 — Available

Setup 01 · late afternoon, no fill
L1 / a
L1 / b
L1 / c
L1 / d — low angle
L1 / e — backlit
06

The margin

Bark / litter still

The grove is four minutes from a stop sign. Paved road on two sides, a parking lot at one end. The wildness holds inside the frame and nowhere outside it.

Nothing native grows underneath. The litter is deep, dry, and the city keeps it anyway.

07

Plate 02 — Flash

Setup 02 · dusk, single hard flash
L2 / a
L2 / b
L3 / a
L3 / a·2
L3 / a·4
08

Plate 03 — Drag

Setup 03 · shutter held open
L3 / b
L3 / c
L3 / c — crop

The trunks smear, the flash freezes the body. The only frames where the wardrobe and the woods move at different speeds.

09

Credits

Stylist / Art Director

Eric Zhang

Photography

Boris Sandoval
Lida Wos

Model

Archie Maznev

Assistant

Alice Zhu

Location

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

Garments

Juunj · Levi’s · GCDS · Dolce&Gabbana · vintage and stylist-owned

03 Info

Art direction, styling,
costume and fashion design.

Education
2023–25MA Fashion, Fashion Art Direction
Academy of Art University · San Francisco
2018–23BA Fashion Design
Indiana University Bloomington
Practice

Art direction · Costume & wardrobe design · Fashion design · Styling · Photography & video · Graphic & layout · Sewing / draping

Tools

InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Excel, Word — advanced. Procreate, Premiere Pro, Lightroom.

Language

English — bilingual · Mandarin — native

Eric (Yichen) Zhang · Los Angeles, CA Set in Newsreader, Archivo, Courier Prime © 2026