LO: Do you think you sometimes need to sacrifice creation’s purity for sustainability? What exactly do you understand balance to be?
HD: Yes, I think sooner or later a situation will arise and I would have to sacrifice my creation’s purity for sustainability, in order to keep up with the demands and deadlines. I only have a pair of hands and a bad shopping habit I need to feed. However, I’m going try, going to try not to sacrifice creations purity in order to sustain the industry’s demands. The balance for me would be creating and getting my stuff out there as much as I can whilst staying true to my techniques. Also, taking time to enjoy the craftsmanship and process behind each garment.

LO: Right and as you’re coping with that fear, what’s your next move? I feel like more and more people and young designers though are just doing their own thing. It’s this feeling of being ready which is tied to this sense of identity and the platforms we are given.
HD: I feel like I’m in that really sticky position where there’s like a devil on the side telling me that, oh you should just go do what you want and just go and push on your own brand; then there’s like the angel on my other shoulder and then she’s telling me that, realistically you should get a job and work in the industry because yeah, the whole business aspect comes in and I’m still blindsided to it, I don’t know anything about it. There’s a lot of young brands in London as well and they don’t last long. They’ll do Fashion Week for two years and then eventually, it will fall off and you end up looking for a job. It’s really scary.

LO: It’s interesting that you’ve pitted doing your own thing as the devil, and finding a job and being “practical” or “realistic” as the angel. More so I think it’s building, it’s building your brand, it’s building the community around your brand. Even for you with Rina wearing your dress, it’s cool because you’re able to like position yourself in that way and surround yourself and your brand with exactly the people who you feel like understand it.
HD: Yeah, I love Rina because she’s similar to me in a sense. She’s Asian and she’s from London and she’s trying to break into an industry where there’s not a lot of Asians. I always kind of envisioned her wearing my clothes, she’s like the perfect fit model for it. Growing up, I was the only Asian kid in my class so I did deal with a lot of racism but it made me stronger in the sense where I wanted to try to kind of divert the stereotype even more. I found that if there is a stereotype, wear it.

LO: I love the way that you just put it you know, I think more so that’s what I meant when I mentioned the idea of ownership, it’s ownership over your own narrative.
HD: Yeah I think what I learned so far is to trust your instincts and there are no rules and if there are rules, they should be broken. There isn’t one way to do it and there isn’t one way or one path to do things.

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