Author: Alexandra Wolff

While most designers create clothes for the next season, Lei Jiang designs for the year 2223. Her recognition as a finalist in the “Best Fashion Performance” category at the UAL Future Fashion Film Festival honours her work, in which she asks what humans might wear when all the land has disappeared under the rising seas.

In her latest work, the Royal College of Art graduate transforms climate anxiety into cultural archaeology by using fashion as a vehicle for imagining human resilience rather than retreat.

The question is not whether the land will disappear, but what cultural knowledge we will take with us beneath the waves. Lei Jiang’s “No-Land: No-Landers” collection, illustrated by her three-minute fashion performance film, poses this question at the conceptual edge of fashion.

In the underwater civilisation of 2223, six archetypal characters navigate the social dynamics of their underwater community, each costume serving as both survival gear and cultural artefact.

Costumes as Social Architecture in “No-Landers”

Jiang’s character archetypes reveal themselves through the deliberate choice of materials that reflect the social positioning within her imaginary world. The rigid geometries of the guard stand in sharp contrast to the fluid mobility of the tourist, revealing hierarchy through form.

The authority figures — “Security, Agent, and Landlord” — embody protection through structured silhouettes and metallic accents. These design choices suggest both armour and status. The members of the community — Neighbour, Housekeeper and Tourist —  embrace mobility through their fluid forms that echo marine life’s adaptive strategies of sea creatures.

“I’m questioning if gender boundaries still exist in the future context,” Jiang explains.

She positions her exclusively female performers in the tradition of cross-dressing theatre, which dissolves binary expectations. Each character embodies multiple identities and her costumes are designed to allow for transformation rather than enforcing fixed roles.

Fish Skin Techniques Anchor the “No-Land” Collection

Jiang’s use of fish skin leather goes beyond sustainability trends and becomes cultural archaeology — preserving ancestral knowledge through contemporary design. The technique, practised by the Hezhe people for over 600 years, is part of global traditions spanning Scandinavia, Alaska, Japan and northeastern China.

“People commonly think of fish skin as food waste. I used this material not only as a sustainable process but also a celebration of traditions and heritage,” Jiang notes. 

With her choice, she transforms around 40 kilogrammes of discarded material per tonne of fish fillets into a portable cultural memory and positions her characters as inheritors of marine wisdom rather than climate refugees.

The natural properties of fish skin — durability, flexibility, water resistance — fulfil the practical requirements of the underwater scenario while preserving the link to ancestral knowledge. Each character incorporates these materials differently: structural elements for the authority figures, fluid applications for the community members.

Jiang’s material innovation goes far beyond fish skin and creates a comprehensive design language for life underwater. 

“Colour plays a crucial role in ‘No-land’ — the marine animals change their colours to camouflage themselves or warn others,” she explains. 

“The collection shows the regular colour patterns of the sea creatures and the light conditions in the sea, which gradually change depending on the depth.”

Identity Fluidity at the Heart of “No-Land”

Jiang’s exploration of identity fluidity is based on marine biology, where gender transformation serves survival rather than social rebellion. Her research on creatures that switch or possess multiple biological gender features provides a scientific basis for cultural speculation about human identity evolution.

“I was looking at cross-dressing theatre costumes for references in fashion and seeing how the representations in the binary gendered system changed through time,” she explains. 

This historical perspective grounds a speculative future in documented cultural practise and suggests identity fluidity as cultural wisdom rather than contemporary innovation.

The film’s all-female cast embody different gender characteristics through their costumes and movements, with each character embodying different possibilities in a single performance. Their underwater apartment becomes a theatre space in which the representation of identity serves to create community.

Fashion as Hope for the Future

Jiang’s work is characterised by the fact that it rejects both nostalgia and despair. While climate fiction often depicts environmental change as a cultural end, “No-Land” presents adaptation as a creative beginning.

“My work is at a balanced point between fashion production and performance costume,” she explains, describing a methodology that serves cultural preservation through speculative design. 

With climate change altering the relationship between environment and identity, Lei Jiang’s collection “No-Land” is an important cultural artefact — one that understands adaptation not as loss, but as evolution guided by ancestral wisdom. 

Perhaps this is the most necessary evolution of fashion: from seasonal consumption to cultural preservation, from individual expression to community survival. In Jiang’s hands, fashion becomes the anthropology of the future we are already creating.

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Lei Jiang’s “No-Land: No-Landers” continues her exploration of speculative fashion through the Leiland brand. Her work can be explored on lei.land, where fashion functions as a cultural research methodology.