EP21｜Design Thinking and Cultural Origins — Fashion Designer Lin Chen-Wei on The Great Artist, Weaving a Contemporary Language from Ancestral Culture

Between tradition and the contemporary, reclaiming the creative roots that belong to the land and the individual

[Taipei] In Episode 21 of The Great Artist, the podcast by DE Global Art Agency, we welcome fashion designer Lin Chen-Wei. In this episode hosted by DJ Lin Heng-Xing, Lin Chen-Wei guides listeners through his design journey—from ancestral culture and observations of gender to contemporary expression—recounting at length a creative reflection on culture, memory, and identity.

For Lin Chen-Wei, fashion design is by no means merely the composition of fabric and silhouette; it is the interweaving of culture, memory, and identity. Every garment is a vessel carrying a story; every cut embodies the creator's understanding of self and world. For this very reason, his designs never linger at the surface of chasing trends but delve deep into the profound questions of origin and belonging.

Lin Chen-Wei's work is deeply rooted in the nourishment of ancestral culture. Setting out from his own cultural background and integrating a delicate observation of gender, he turns design into a creative practice that inquires, "Where do I come from?" and "Who am I?" Amid the tides of globalization, many designs readily slip into homogeneity and superficiality, yet Lin Chen-Wei chooses to move against the current—returning to the land, returning to the individual, and drawing inexhaustible creative energy from the most fundamental of cultural memories.

In this episode, Lin Chen-Wei shares how he reconstructs the language of clothing through "design thinking." He observes that design thinking is not merely a method for solving problems but a perspective for viewing and interpreting the world. Through this mode of thought, he seeks a subtle point of balance between traditional codes and contemporary expression, allowing ancient cultural elements to be reborn in modern fashion design. In his work, tradition and the contemporary are not opposing poles but a whole that nourishes and fulfills each other.

Lin Chen-Wei's creative philosophy infuses Taiwanese fashion design with a profound cultural foundation. He proves that design with true international recognizability often comes not from blindly following international trends but from being deeply rooted in one's own cultural soil. Only by reclaiming the creative roots that belong to the land and the individual can design possess the power to move hearts and transcend borders.

Lin Chen-Wei's creation, grounded in cultural origins, resonates precisely with the academic legitimacy and international career that The Great Artist advocates—taking a profound cultural understanding as its foundation, and transforming the creativity belonging to the land and the individual into a fashion narrative capable of reaching the world.

The Great Artist EP21 is now available on Apple Podcasts, SoundOn, and other platforms, with each episode running approximately 35 minutes. You are warmly invited to listen and experience how Lin Chen-Wei stitches together tradition and the contemporary through design.