MELISSA BUI SS16: NERIDA’S GARDEN

By earthtoiris | March 14, 2016 0 Comments

HONG KONG | Hong Kong fashion designer Melissa Bui likes to put contrasting things together when she creates her bespoke pieces. “I like to play around with parts of things, random things that do not necessarily makes sense”, she says. Marine underwater life has a lot to do with this random diversity too. So not surprisingly Bui came up with the theme for her SS16 collection while on a trip to the Maldives. “I love anything that has to do with fish and underwater”. Melissa Bui’s Nerida’s Garden collection recreates Nerida’s underwater garden just in the same way Bui imagines it. Fine hand made embroideries and beadings recreate the textures of coral and sea anemones. The collection comes in white matching a feminine and elegant pastel palette; which contrasts from her AW15 collection that was in black with pieces of color. She uses silk, cotton and also high-quality polyester to create more structured pieces. “This 100% polyester from France, it looks like raw silk. It works well for some designs because it’s more structured and I like the way it moves”, she tells me. Bui is into details. That’s one of the signature traits of her designs. Some of the beading she designs to decorate her gowns can take up to two months to make. Abelia is her favorite piece. She feels proud of it because the art work was very difficult to create. “Totally worth it!”. Likewise she doesn’t like to waste anything. “We often reuse leftover fabrics for a new embroidery to bring texture to the design”, she adds. One of signature traits of Melissa Bui’s collections is the versatility of the outfits. That’s specially the case of Nerida’s Garden Skirts and blouses. She always find ways to come up with extremely feminine, elegant lady-like designs that have the potential to be more casual and contemporary when worn with jeans. “There are lots of things that are detachable from my designs. That’s kind of a fun thing”, Bui explains. She would create a very cute and whimsical and fun piece with, for instance, a big detachable bow so that her clients can also wear it with a t-shirt and sneakers not only for cocktail. “I don’t want the pieces to be restricted to only certain occasions”. Photos courtesy of Melissa Bui. Address: By Appointment Only: Tel. +852 2516 0210  1/F, Kong Tak Building, 92 Connaught Road West, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong See on Google maps.