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From Archive to Immersion: Yi-Ching Wang’s installation at London’s Imperial War Museum

A person lies on the floor with their hands covering their face, while a large, tent-like garment structure made from military-style coats and fabric hangs above them. The oversized garment looms down toward the person, creating a dramatic and tense scene. The background is dark, with a single blue light illuminating the setup.
  • Written byNatalie Ellis
  • Published date 08 December 2025
A person lies on the floor with their hands covering their face, while a large, tent-like garment structure made from military-style coats and fabric hangs above them. The oversized garment looms down toward the person, creating a dramatic and tense scene. The background is dark, with a single blue light illuminating the setup.

When designers from MA Costume Design for Performance step into the world of historical research, something special tends to happen: the past begins to breathe again. This is especially true of alumna Yi-Ching Wang, whose recent work at the Imperial War Museum transforms wartime memory into a deeply evocative installation.

Yi-Ching, who graduated from MA Costume Design for Performance at London College of Fashion in 2024, has long been drawn to the dialogue between material history and personal narrative. Her design practice blends archival research, recorded testimony and experimental construction, often using garments as vessels for stories that are otherwise hidden or overlooked.  Drawing on uniforms, personal accounts and the wider visual language of conflict, the installation creates an environment where costume becomes an interpreter of lived experience. Rather than simply reproducing or displaying garments, Yi-Ching reimagines them in a performative space, allowing visitors to engage with the emotional and psychological dimensions of wartime dress.

I came to MA Costume Design for Performance after years in theatre where costume often served the needs of the stage, script, and director, and I wanted to explore how costume could instead become the starting point and centre of an event. Throughout the course, my tutors Agnes and Donatella continually challenged my ideas and practice, enabling me to experiment with transforming structural costumes that shape space through the body and become platforms for political, feminist, and social narratives — work recognised by the Procter & Gamble Better Lives Award for my graduate project, Silent Resonance. These experiences continue to guide my practice today, particularly in my exploration of historical memory, social violence, and embodied performance.

—  Yi-Ching Wang
A person stands on a city pavement holding a cardboard sign that reads “Justice for Comfort Women,” wrapped in a garment printed with illustrated faces. Behind them is a large, sculptural figure made from military-style green fabric, towering like a protective or symbolic presence. The scene is set on a sunlit London street lined with historic buildings and light traffic.

The work reflects the core ethos of the MA course itself, which encourages students to think beyond the body and explore costume as a narrative force — something capable of shaping atmosphere, carrying memory and provoking reflection. Yi-Ching’s installation demonstrates how this way of thinking can flourish in public-facing institutions, where audiences encounter costume not as embellishment but as a living, interpretive medium.

Her project at the Imperial War Museum offers a powerful reminder that garments are never just objects. They are witnesses. They carry traces of identity, labour, trauma and survival. Yi-Ching’s work encourages us to look again at what clothing can hold and how contemporary designers can play a role in activating those histories for new audiences.

As her career continues to develop, this installation stands as a striking example of how postgraduate research can lead to meaningful, resonant work beyond a traditional theatre or screen context. Yi-Ching’s practice invites future designers — and museum visitors alike — to ask deeper questions about memory, body and the stories that live in the seams of the past.

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