“We don’t say I love you very much in my family. So this collection is my way of connecting to them, of saying thank you for what they’ve done for me and gone through to get me here.”
Jacob is a third-generation New Zealander. His paternal great-grandfather came to Dunedin in the 1840s for the gold rush, part of the first wave of Chinese immigrants. His maternal grandmother immigrated later, in the 1950s, as a mail-order bride for an arranged marriage.
“From extortionate fees to get here, weeks and months in ships, and then facing anti-Asian sentiment when they arrived—my family has gone through a lot to get to New Zealand. It’s not something we talk about much, but it would have been very hard for them.
“But my parents grew up as Kiwis. They lived a kiwi lifestyle, the beach, the sun, a giant rotunda washing line in their backyard—all of these things that kiwis can relate to, but they were still considered ‘other’.”
‘A Golden Identity’ features a modern take on traditional Chinese garmentry and the universal workers apron, shot in-situ at a family member’s home in Wellington. Jacob says the imagery is designed to evoke a feeling of nostalgia and familiarity for all New Zealanders, regardless of where they’ve come from.
“It’s very personal. I wanted to speak to the Asian experience in New Zealand, showing that who you are as a person is not how you look, or where you are geographically, but our experiences and what we go through.
“I’m a New Zealander, not just because I live here now, but because I was born to a Chinese family that has been here since the 1840s.”
Jacob was born in Auckland and grew up mostly in the Hawkes Bay, but moved back to Auckland when he was 14.
“I loved the Hawkes Bay, but it wasn’t very culturally diverse. My parents wanted to expose me to more and other cultures, so we moved back to Auckland.”
He says that fashion is something he fell into, more than something that he chose.
“Throughout high school I was really into music. I played saxophone and piano, and I loved it—I still love it—as a way of expressing myself; singing, playing music, and making people happy.
“I actually was planning on going to the Auckland Jazz School, but my parents wanted me to push myself outside of my comfort zone, so I ended up applying to the New Zealand School of Music—Te Kōkī.”
Jacob completed his first year at Te Kōkī, but started to question if it was what he really wanted to do.
“I made an extensive pros and cons list, and realised that maybe music was just something that I was good at in high school, and felt obliged to study at university and have a career in.
“But funnily, all through my first year, I wasn’t known as the ‘saxophone kid’, I was known as the kid with the cool outfits. I even had a sewing machine in my room and people would ask me to fix their clothes for them—really I should’ve been practicing my saxophone, but I was already doing fashion instead.”
Jacob switched into the Fashion Design Technology major, where the University encourages students to explore evolving cultural trends and diversity from many perspectives within fashion design.
He says the switch was an easy process through which he says he felt very supported by the University, and something he’s grateful he was able to do.
“I’m very glad I didn’t get three years down the line in my music degree before realising it wasn’t what I wanted to do.”
He quickly realised he’d found his true passion in fashion.
“I’ve always been quite strong at conceptualising things, but the fashion design course helped me bring those ideas out in a cohesive and constructive way. Not just as an idea, but a fully formed and formalised concept.”
For now, Jacob is carrying on with his role as administrator at the University’s Joan Stevens Hall, but with his collection up for design awards, applications for a design residency in Germany pending, and a potential place in a Japanese English teaching programme in the mix, Jacob says he feels lucky to have so many options after he graduates.
“I think design is the pathway for me, but at the end of the day I just love people. Helping people, expressing their stories in my work, and just talking with people, whatever I do I’ll be happy so long as it involves other people.”