To all my China Nite XVII models,

I just wanted to share my final thoughts, congratulations, and thank you’s to all of you; Elaine and I have been truly blessed and grateful to work with such an amazing group of talented and committed set of individuals. I actually never expected to be a part of this ever again. I was 115% convinced that last year’s China Nite would be my last, especially since I was graduating college that same semester and thought I would be out in the real world focusing on other things, mainly working my butt off in some little office cubicle among many (it partly became true; I do work in an office, but no cubicle!) In any case, with a lot of coercing from Elaine and my other friends Adrian and Christine, I hesitantly decided to try out as a China Nite coordinator for the last time. Elaine and I got the gig, working as partners for this year’s show. Considering that it mainly asked for my time on Sundays, I figured that it wouldn’t be that much of a problem.
One thing I definitely want to mention in this post is that human trafficking was probably the least expected thing you were thinking of when you decided to try out for this year’s China Nite. In late October, when Elaine and I were still in the brainstorming process, it was actually her idea to address this serious topic (much to my objections); my original intention was to work with the idea of the mogwai or spirits of dead ancestors that (according to Chinese tradition) supposedly come back to haunt living relatives who owe them something. However, the more we discussed it, the more interested I became in possibly making a full fashion sequence based upon the issue of human trafficking. I decided to scrap my own ideas altogether and focus more on a tangible and realistic theme.

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