After-Print Graduation Fashion Collection by Betty Liu

How do bees see the world? This might be a pretty unlikely question for a fashion student, but it is the driving idea behind a three-part collection RMIT honours candidate Betty Liu has created as part of her graduation series. Betty’s approach to clothing design goes beyond aesthetic appeal and digs deeper to the multiple functions of fashion—touching on technology, sociology, identity, and in this case—nature and the disarming degradation of our delicate ecosystem.

Titled After-Print, Betty’s work explores nature from the perspective of bees to raise awareness about colony collapse disorder (CCD), which is the tragic phenomenon impacting the bee population the world over due to cause significant irreparable eco damage. For the uninformed—honey bees are really important, and they are endangered. They also have a broader vision spectrum than humans and can see ultraviolet light.

Betty’s idea was to focus specifically on one element causing the bee population to decline—an agricultural insecticide called neonicotinoids, which has rendered our bees more susceptible to disease and generally colour disorientated. After-Print toys with colour theory and the after-image phenomenon, where a viewer’s eyes would simulate an image of what it was looking at previously against a white space but with negative colours instead.

The idea of the phantom splash of colour is to replicate the troubled vision of the bees—Betty’s three sculptural garments have been created in intense grass green, bright poppy red, and a golden yellow smoked to mimic honeycomb. Bright white replicates the after-image illusion but also references deserted hives.