Meet Eray Zhang

We recently connected with Eray Zhang and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Eray, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

On a flight back to China from the United States, I found myself unable to sleep and accidentally stumbled upon the Project Runway channel on the plane’s TV. I never would have guessed that this brief 13-hour episode would change my life’s plans from that point on.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Currently, I’m still working under a fashion brand, I feel like I’m too young to start building my own brand, and I need to learn more to make sure I can be ready for that challenge.

I’m actually consider start work on building up my brand, but since my main job is kind of busy, I can only work on that part during the nighttime. So it will be building slowly, but I promise I will show my work someday. Then, that must be a super interesting and exciting life experience!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

work fast, work hard, embrace rejection, and possess the confidence and courage to start anew.

I like to start to deal with a thing or get started with a task immediately and finish it as soon as possible, although this is also included in the reason that I do things fast. working fast allows me to get more done in the same amount of time as someone else. working hard, I don’t feel like I need to talk too much about this part, no one can be successful without hard work.

Taking my own experience as an example, when I was applying for university, my first project involved creating a mood board. As a student newly entering the field of design and creativity, it was quite challenging to break free from conventional thinking patterns and generate innovative ideas, which led me to struggle significantly at the outset of developing my mood board. Initially, I found myself unable to produce anything meaningful, after extensive contemplation, the topic selection and mood board concepts I presented were outright rejected by my teacher who expressed discomfort with them and even questioned whether I truly had potential in design. Nevertheless, I resolved not to give up easily. After careful consideration, I decided to abandon both my original topic and all prior work in favor of exploring a completely new idea from scratch. This time around, I deviated from traditional methods by crafting a three-dimensional mood board using materials such as wood and paint. My teacher was very pleased with this output. For me, this experience marked my initial step into the design and creative industry. It taught me not to be afraid of rejection and the courage to start again, which is of great help to me in my future study and work.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

I think it’s better to go all in on our strengths. I am a vivid example of this.

Since childhood, I have always hated the courses of science and politics in schools. For me, although I know that if I study hard, I can get excellent results in the exam, it will make me very painful, and I instinctively resist learning these majors that I am not interested in. On the contrary, I have an inexplicable talent and interest in painting. Let’s just say I’m not willing to spend half an hour to finish math homework, but I’m willing to stay up all night to finish a drawing. When it came time to consider the choice of college major, I decided to follow my heart and chose fashion design as my major, which is also my dream buried in my heart since I was 5 or 6 years old. The result is obvious, after I chose and engaged in my favorite major, my parents never worried about my study, because I would automatically study hard and get excellent results, rather than like before, my science scores are always countdown in the class!

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