Soo Jung found inspiration for her collection in the movie Blue Swallow (Cheong-yeon) about Park Kyung-won, the first female aviator in Korea. Based the early 1900s when Korean society was conservative and discriminative against women, the heroine had passion and an independent spirit for her job. Pilot uniforms and Asian influences are reinterpreted by Soo Jung who was born in Yeosu, Korea and raised in Seoul, Korea.
Ivanka used the pilot’s point of view overlooking the land from above for her textile inspiration. Instead of using the more traditional patchwork approach to represent the land, she combined textile techniques with hand drawing to create the feel of paintings. She bonded newsprint paper and brown paper to the base fabric, applied pigments using silkscreen techniques and drew patterns using a knife. For some, she used a chef’s torch to create a burnout effect. The overall impression is that of an art piece instead of a typical printed textile. Ivanka was born and raised in Pernik, Bulgaria.