Esme Yu
Design and Technology MFA
Parsons Paris
Specialisms: Womenswear / Textiles / Apparel
Location: Paris, France
Esme Yu
First Name: Esme
Last Name: Yu
Specialisms: Womenswear / Textiles / Apparel
Sectors:
My Location: Paris, France
University / College: Parsons Paris
Course / Program Title: Design and Technology MFA
About
Esme Yu is a womenswear designer and recent MFA Fashion Design graduate from Parsons Paris, with a First Class BA in Fashion from Edinburgh College of Art. Before completing her MFA, she worked as a designer at KWK by KAY KWOK, contributing to runway collections across ready-to-wear, accessories, leather and experimental fabrication.
Her practice combines historical research with a strong focus on construction, materiality and textile experimentation. Moving between tailoring and more fluid approaches to dress, she is interested in reinterpreting familiar clothing archetypes through subtle shifts in structure, surface and detail.Her work explores memory, absence and the traces left within garments, balancing conceptual research with clothes that remain grounded in the act of wearing.
WHAT IS MISSING REMAINS explores absence, memory and inherited silence through the language of dress. Rooted in Chantal Akerman’s Saute ma ville (1968) and post-war domestic life, the collection draws on 1940s utility clothing and military archetypes as traces of lives shaped by restraint and repetition. Familiar garments are disrupted through reversibility, exposed construction, faded surfaces and displaced details. Tailoring, lingerie and protective forms coexist throughout the collection, while material interventions suggest wear, erasure and memory. Rather than reconstructing the past, the project considers what remains when histories, roles and experiences are no longer fully visible.
Competitions
Global Creative Graduate Showcase 2026
THE LAST DECADENCE Inspired by Dürrüşehvar Sultan, the last Ottoman princess, Decadence imagines her entering London’s Blitz Club dressed with the rebellious spirit of Adam Ant. The collection brings Ottoman tailoring into dialogue with dandyism and New Romanticism, contrasting imperial structure with fluid draping and distressed, layered surfaces. Moving between opulence and decay, it reinterprets historical dress through a contemporary, gender-neutral perspective.
Competitions