From Academia to Atelier: A Scholar's Journey Into Fashion

A young Asian woman lies on her side holding her head in her hands. She is wearing a gold and green gown.

After studying Chinese art and material culture, Media, Culture, and Communication alum Alvina Ding (MA '15) founded the womenswear brand SHUMINGYU.

What's been your professional trajectory since graduating from the Media, Culture, and Communication program?

During my time at NYU, I started working at Christie’s with rare works of Chinese art. That experience deepened my understanding of material culture and gave me a firsthand perspective on how history, craftsmanship, and storytelling intersect. After graduating, I formally joined Christie’s in the Asian Art department, where I continued to engage with objects of cultural significance and further refine my curatorial eye.

In many ways, this path also built upon my undergraduate studies in art history, which first grounded me in the visual and cultural analysis that continues to inform my work today. I expanded that foundation through my Media, Culture, and Communication (MCC) master's thesis, which focused on the Chinese literati and traced the genealogy of my own family. What began as an academic exploration gradually evolved into the foundation for SHUMINGYU, my womenswear brand inspired by Chinese art and cultural heritage. I later attended business school at Yale and design school at Parsons. I officially launched the brand in 2023.

The MCC program gave me the time and space to explore theory in depth while also combining it with practical experience. That balance has been invaluable, as it not only provided me with a strong cultural and analytical framework but also taught me how to bridge heritage with contemporary design in a way that feels authentic and resonant today.

Being in New York City helped me hone my artistic side. The city’s creative energy and penchant for pushing creative boundaries shaped the way I saw myself as a designer and creator.

Walk us through your design process at SHUMINGYU.

I first decide on a particular theme, which is either a genre of Chinese art or type of craft. Then I dive into research on the theme for a month or two. I read academic papers and art history books to understand the significance of this kind of genre, the elements that influenced its formation, what type of art it had an impact on later, its philosophical underpinnings, where the colors come from, and literary references. I look at the most representative pieces of art from the genre and identify the most distinctive characteristics that will define the overall feel of the collection. During this process, I am looking at art objects that have graced the courts of emperors, the gaze of connoisseurs, and the hands of skilled artisans. From the free-spirited brushwork of ink paintings, the rhythmic flow of poetry, and the delicate luster of ceramics, all of this informs my final design decisions.

As I do the research, I see designs in my head. I visualize the images and colors and capture what I see into sketches, which I then translate into digital prints. Once I finish my prints, I think about what silhouettes they would work best on. From then on, it’s about deciding what fabrics work best for each design and seeing how different designs fit together into an overall collection.

I thought it was odd that despite the breadth and nuances of Chinese aesthetics that were crystalized over thousands of years, it was rarely reflected in modern fashion.

Alvina Ding

What experience are you curating for your clients?

I want my pieces to serve as a medium through which people can find beauty in everyday life and connect with long-standing artistic lineages. Perhaps one of my prints will spark someone’s interest in understanding a particular period in history or start conversations around how beauty is perceived today. If my pieces can inspire people to value culture, I consider that success.

What has it been like to launch your own apparel line?

Launching SHUMINGYU has been both deeply rewarding and at times challenging to balance the creative and business demands of a new venture. We are crafting a new narrative for what modern Chinese fashion can look like and are consistently perfecting that vision and iterating on our pieces. We’re also pushing the boundaries of what aspects of this genre we can innovate on, which means we look beyond silhouettes and touch on other aspects of innovation, such as print design.

As a designer, what keeps me motivated are our customers, people who truly appreciate and support the vision behind the brand. It has been especially meaningful to see SHUMINGYU resonate across different markets — we now have customers all over the U.S. as well as in Europe. That response reinforces the idea that cultural narratives, when expressed through fashion, can be both specific and universal.