ProfileAsian heritage, US influences: founder of Grace Gui fashion label has learned how to blend the two in her knitwear

Emerging fashion designer Grace Wang Guixin, who grew up in the US, has reconnected with her Chinese roots, as seen in her label’s take on knitwear

She talks to the Post about breaking away from the ‘model minority’ stereotype, rejecting, then embracing, her heritage and working with female farmers

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Grace Wang Guixin talks has wedded her Chinese heritage and her American upbringing in her knitwear label Grace Gui. Photo: Grace Gui

Published: 7:15pm, 3 May 2024

After a year of studying French and Arabic at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, Grace Wang Guixin returned to the United States to begin again at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

In May 2023, during the first year of her design degree, she founded knitwear label Grace Gui. Now in her second year, Wang has developed an introspective style, a strong set of principles and a one-of-a-kind business model for her brand – which has already garnered over 8,000 followers on Instagram.

The emerging fashion designer, who spent much of her adolescence in Caucasian-dominated environments trying to fit the “model minority” stereotype, has reconnected with her roots through her distinctly Chinese-American take on textiles.

Wang was born and raised in New Jersey. Her Wuhan-born mother and her Shanghai-born father met when they were both studying at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Wang grew up in suburban New Jersey. Photo: Grace Gui

“We would go back to Shanghai every year, which is where I get a lot of my [East] Asian influences,” Wang reveals. “We don’t speak English at home; we mostly speak Mandarin, which has been a great thing for me, as I grew up in a very American system and went to a school with maybe 12 kids of colour.”