Recently, Xie Yanzi, a student majoring in Fashion Creative Design at the Shanghai International College of Fashion and Innovation of Donghua University (SCF), won the Gold Award at the London Design Awards for her IP project ‘Flora Quan’.
As one of the most prestigious and influential design competitions in the international design community, the London Design Awards showcase outstanding creative works from around the world, spanning multiple fields including product design, architecture, interior design, graphic design, and UX/UI design. The competition is open to a wide range of participants, including companies, teams, freelancers, students, and design enthusiasts. The competition evaluates entries based on three core criteria: design innovation, cultural integration, and commercial value. It holds significant influence and professional recognition within the international design community.
(design by Xie Yanzi, winner of the London Design Award Gold Prize: Flora Quan)
The 2025 London Design Award attracted over 2,300 entries, and this project emerged as an outstanding achievement after rigorous selection and intense competition. This intellectual property (IP) uses the iconic hairpin flower of the women of Chengpu in Quanzhou, Fujian, and the drooping beast motifs of Min Nan architecture as its visual carriers. During the design process, the layered structure of the hairpin flowers and the form of the water spout creatures were artistically reimagined, while incorporating elements such as the horse-face skirt attire and the ring-shaped patterns of Min Nan red houses, which are part of intangible cultural heritage. This ensures that the IP retains the essence of traditional culture while aligning with contemporary aesthetic preferences.
This work showcases Xie Yanzi's originality and international competitiveness in the field of digital cultural creativity, reflecting the school's outstanding achievements in systematic teaching across dimensions such as creative logic, cultural expression, and technological application. It presents a new paradigm for global design education that integrates cultural heritage with technological innovation. Through the practical application of AIGC technology to integrate intangible cultural heritage symbols such as hairpins and dripping beasts, it also validates the feasibility of the ‘cultural decoding-technology empowerment’ methodology, providing a highly valuable reference case for the development of digital cultural creativity.
SCF is an innovative Sino-foreign cooperative educational institution established in China through deepening international academic and educational cooperation, focusing on the field of fashion creativity. With fashion design innovation and fashion management as its core disciplines, it builds an interdisciplinary training system, deeply integrating the concept of sustainable development, covering cutting-edge content such as circular design, ecological materials, sustainable brand strategy, and communication. It actively explores new models and mechanisms for Sino-foreign cooperative education, striving to cultivate high-quality, innovative, and outstanding talents with an international perspective. In the face of societal transformation, digital transformation and interdisciplinary development have become inevitable trends. Our design education will focus on cultivating leading talent for the sustainable fashion industry and future societal life in the context of intelligent industrial transformation. This award also reflects the achievements of Donghua University's internationalized talent cultivation initiatives.
