YENTSÉ stands for sophisticated tailoring, where the details make the silhouette. The Chinese Yanze Jin mixes Eastern and Western influences with his label.
With 20 to watch, Flanders DC presents twenty emerging talents, who recently took their first steps in the worlds of design or fashion. We believe they will have great success in the future.
Yanze Jin
Who is YENTSÉ?
- studied fashion and textiles at the Wuhan Textile University in China
- graduated from the Fashion Department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp
- since then, rapper Russ and DJ Snake have already worn his designs
- in addition to YENTSÉ, he also has the street-style brand Nonstop Worldwide
I put my customer first with YENTSÉ. My designs must represent their personality and be an added value to them. Thanks to my life trajectory, I can bring together Eastern and Western styles perfectly. Other designers who bring these two worlds together often use specific patterns or symbols. I prefer to express my concepts and ideas more subtly through the garment itself, in the cut and the shape. I often combine different materials to create a contrast. Sometimes, I can be a very quiet person, and other times, I am a bit more extreme. That duality often creeps into my design aesthetic.
Because we are a start-up brand, everything we do is based on a sustainable system, from the footprint of our transport to the production of our fabrics. I work with ecological materials from Italy, such as organic silk, wool and linen. In our workshop in Antwerp, we make everything, even our prototypes, by hand.
When I studied fashion design in China, I picked up a lot of commercial things, such as marketing and merchandising. I discovered my creativity at the Antwerp Academy. I also learned that you should always push your creativity to the limit, even if your budget is limited. The biggest challenge remains getting everything organised. In addition to design, I manage the studio, monitor production and do marketing and PR. That is tough, but it’s worth it. Showing your collection to the world remains magical every time. And so is the teamwork that is required for this. No matter how hard the process is, everything miraculously comes together in the end.
