A discussion with : Yiu Hei Cheung

Can you please introduce yourself ?

 My name is Yiu Hei Cheung and I’m a freelance designer and the Brand Director of Isochron, a jewelry focused project (I suppose it’s grown into a brand) from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  In the scope of my personal work I split my time evenly between designing and creating bags, and reworking old and worn garments.  As of late, I’ve been reworking a lot of Arc’teryx and Veilance garments.  

What are your inspirations ?

 I feel as if this is a common answer, but a lot of my inspiration comes from just consuming a lot of visual media and forming an idea of what my ideal objects and garments would look like, who a person that owns these objects or wears these garments would be, and what they would do with these objects and garments.  In short… just a lot of media-influenced imagination. 

I suppose that’s why I always find my creations too costume-like for everyday wear.  They’re made for a figure in mind, and that figure isn’t who I am on a day-to-day basis.  

What was the path that led you to become a creator? What were your motivations?

 The path is a long and winding one.  As a child, I daydreamed about making things, but was taught that a career rooted in creativity was not conducive to a comfortable life for myself or my future family.  I spent a lot of my pre-university youth balancing a heavy workload of math and science courses that brought happiness to my parents, and a handful of woodworking, design, and photography classes that my parents were ambivalent about. 

That balancing act continued into University in the form of an Undergraduate Degree in Architecture.  Within my first semester I knew it wasn’t for me, but I did appreciate the design thinking and skills that I learned!  During my last year of school I decided to try my hand at applying what I had learned at a smaller scale and in a way that was quicker to produce, more tangible, and could affect my audience in an (arguably) more personal way. 

I picked up a set of leather needles, waxed thread, an awl, and a hide of work leather and began making leather bags.  I’ve been doing it ever since. 

I talk about my family’s desires for me and my future because it played an important role in my motivation as a creator.  A few years back, a friend of mine told me that I had quite a “heavy” name.  He said that the characters of my name, when put together, meant “to bring honor to your family name”.  My family never told me this (“we just picked a few characters that satisfied your grandparents”), but my knowledge of Hong Kong culture isn’t deep enough to confirm what my friend said, but I quite like that meaning. 

I create because I want to make my family proud, but I want to make my family proud in my own way.  It wouldn’t mean much if I just did what I was told and placated the worries of my parents - there isn’t honour in that, nor is there much to learn.  I would like to think that I’d truly “bring honour to my family name” if I could live a life where I sustain myself through work that utilizes my passion for creating in order to fulfill the needs of, and bring joy to my clients.  

What project / collaboration / collection would you like to have done? (it can be an existing project or a dream project)

 I’ve really enjoyed spending the past year developing a line of products for Isochron in collaboration with ECCO Leather!  Being able to incorporate ECCO’s specialty leathers such as the translucent Apparition and incredibly light-yet-strong FSDX Dyneema into jewelry and accessories has been great fun.  

If I had to pick a type of collaboration, I’d love to continue down the path of collaborating with material developers.  Creation involves three aspects - ideas, mediums, and technical skills.  I feel like a collaborative effort between a material developer and a designer involves both parties sharing equal responsibility over those aspects; the designer offers the ideas, the developers offer the medium, and they both apply their skills in order to make a product.  

What materials and processes do you use for your designs and creation ?

 I don’t have too much of a design process really!  However, there is a “skill” or process that I learned when I studied architecture - the Parti Drawing.  We were taught to draw an initial sketch, guided mostly by feeling, with the intention of capturing the general form of your idea, and the key features you  had in mind.  You’d always refer to the Parti as you worked out your design - it’s the guiding star of your process.  

The two main “materials” I use are leather and some form of technical fabric; it’s hard to pinpoint one type of fabric when you’re reworking existing garments!  Technical garments provide a welcome layer of challenge as they generally require a little bit of care.  For example, needle holes in Gore-Tex don’t heal like they do in cotton, lightweight fabrics often curl and stretch during or after sewing if not done properly, and new high-strength fabrics such as Dyneema can quickly blunt needles.  

It’s interesting as these new challenges have often been “overcome” by adjusting my leather working techniques.  Glueing high-use seams in leather bags translated to glueing instead of pinning seams in non-healing fabrics, chiselling stitch-holes into layers of leather translated to gently hand poking thick or tricky layers of Dyneema with an awl for hand sewing to prevent snapping a sewing machine needle.  

What are the essential eco-responsible criteria to find in a brand according to you?

 Two things stand out to me: honesty and a critical look at process waste.  Sustainability sells in this day and age, and every brand claims to be sustainable even when they really aren’t.  Cool, brand A uses recycled materials, brand B uses a dye technique that greatly reduces water usage, but what’s the rest of the process like?  What are your transport emissions looking like?  And factory emissions?  What damage can these products do after landing in the hands of your customers?  Are you producing more than what is actually going to sell, and if so, what is happening to these products?   

Your favourite eco-friendly outdoor brand loves making fleece, a material that contaminates water when it sheds tiny polyester fibres during a wash.  Your top-of-the-line performance brand only uses complex construction processes that result in carbon emissions from the factory that makes the garments.  Every brand sources their materials in one place, flies it to a factory in another place, flies it again to a QA facility, flies it to a local distribution centre, where a truck sends it to a retail location.  

I know I sound quite negative, but I really dislike it when companies (or people) pretend to be something they aren’t.  Especially when it’s in the name of profit.  

How do you see the textile industry in 10 years?

 Great question!  It’s something I didn’t really give much thought to in the past, but after working with ECCO Leather and seeing all the advancements they’re making on a traditional material, I have high hopes for the features that future fabrics will bring.  I like the idea of revisiting traditional materials as it brings a level of comfort that quells the skepticism surrounding entirely new things. 

On the other hand, I was having a conversation with a friend who’s quite a bit younger and MUCH smarter than I who is currently working in a lab dedicated to synthesizing new materials (if you ever read this, please correct me if I’m wrong).  His team had made great strides towards developing a material similar to Dyneema in property.  To think that knowledge and technology has come so far so as to allow University students to do this gets me quite excited for what’s to come. 

Though as excited as I am, I hope that all of this is done responsibly, with the health of the Earth in mind.  I hope that sustainable processes will be considered when developing and producing these materials.  I often find myself wondering if there is a point in development if said development will harm the planet we call home.  Why advance if it makes our home inhospitable?  I hope that the textile industry thinks about this too.  

Any future project that you want to talk about ?

 My personal work is quite unplanned, but I’d love to continue working with you (Fasunaa) in the future! I’d love to take this opportunity to share my thanks to my team at Isochron instead. The lovely people I work with inspire me every day, and bring me a kind of happiness and fulfilment that I have never felt before. They’ve produced lovely works of writing, photography, artwork, videos, and of course jewelry over the past few months. It would mean the world to me if you check out the fruits of our labour at www.isochron.ca