After studying fashion design in China, Minjia Li moved to Australia to pursue her Master of Fashion (Design) degree at RMIT.
Drawing from her personal history and knowledge of unique Chinese social phenomena she wants to explore and reveal aspects of culture and thinking from China in her graduate work. On a recent trip back home to China she noticed something she had previously taken for granted—the way middle-aged women (dama) commonly dressed, often in protective items and in layers of patterned colourful clothes—her encounter with this style of dressing caused her to rethink Chinese fashion. Minjia is fascinated by the way that the unique Chinese social environment has created this fashion culture, and in her graduate work she focuses on understanding and redesigning Dama clothing.