With 910k followers, you may have come across Margaret Zhang on your Instagram feed or seen her on the front row of every fashion week, but she's so much more than your average influencer. A law school grad who's worked on fashion shoots with photography legend Peter Lindbergh, she's just finished directing her first short film—at just the age of 24. The fashion prodigy has proven herself a force to be reckoned with but we managed to catch her for a moment during Fashion Asia in Hong Kong to see how she manages it all.
What made you first fall in love with fashion?
I studied ballet and piano growing up, and while they’re not directly related, they’re steeped in history and culture, as is fashion. With ballet, it's obviously more conducive to visual integration. Costume was a huge part of my experience with dance so I became very enthralled with Raf Simons and Viktor and Rolf and sculptural designers in 2009, especially when Raf was just starting at Dior and Viktor and Rolf did the ballet collection.
Who are some creatives you look up to?
Miuccia Prada, Raf Simons and Dries Van Noten are kings. They’re just very well educated in history and art and almost scientific in their approach to the female form, and how they want women to feel. They’ve had such a longstanding career in their own or other brands which is a testament how sustainable their approach is to design.
Music-wise, I love Brian Eno who is not modern per se, (I think his most influential time was in the late 80s early 90s) but he explores a much more abstract space in music that garners a more visceral reaction from consumers versus riding on trends for engagement.
There’s a photographer who’s agoraphobic (her Instagram account is called @streetview.portraits) and she’s scared of going outside but she takes amazing screen captures of Google Earth and finds amazing scenes around the world. I think it’s amazing that she can turn her situation into a creative pursuit.
