Samuel Yi-Ern Tan

Samuel studies clothing and dressmaking in postwar Japan and the emergence of contemporary Japanese Fashion. Located in the development of drawing, cutting, and sewing technologies/techniques in such institutions as Bunka Fukusō Gakuin, Samuel’s work concerns how dressmaking as a domestic, vocational, and femininely gendered form of work in the immediate postwar transforms into an aestheticized, professional, and male-dominated practice by the 1970s. Samuel’s past research has examined the work of Miyake Design Studio between the 1980s and early 2000s, with an interest in how the Studio deployed technical discourse in the domains of law and textile engineering to position Miyake Issey outside of the field of fashion, and more proximately with the adjacent disciplines of art, unhyphenated design, and technology.

Samuel holds an SMArchS in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a BA (Hons) in Architecture and MArch from the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he graduated with Highest Distinction as valedictorian of the 2021 cohort. At NUS, he was the recipient of the Lee Kip Lin Architectural Heritage Research Fund Grant and the Lee Kip Lin Gold Medal and Prize in Architectural History Studies. He has presented his work at the College Arts Association Conference, the Society of Architectural Historians Great Britain Annual Symposium, and the Technical University of Munich, and has published writings in Ardeth (2023), and Remote Practices: Architecture at a Distance (2022). Additionally, he has lectured at Harvard University, NUS, and Bond University.