Couture for the 2025 Future Science Prize

For the 2025 Future Science Prize, GRACE CHEN brought personal conversations, fittings across cities and considered construction together in clothing created for scientists and donors.

At the 2025 Future Science Prize Awards Ceremony & Concert.

GRACE CHEN created clothing for scientists and donors taking part in the 2025 Future Science Prize. The work brought together measurements across several cities, garments developed for individual wearers, and details that connected Chinese design references with the practical demands of dressing for a ceremony.

Our October 2025 retrospective followed that process from the first conversations to the finished clothes. Its most revealing moments were often small: an old formal outfit someone was ready to replace, a particular idea of how to look, a sleeve reconsidered for movement, a name embroidered inside a garment. Together, they show how personal a formal occasion can be.

Begin with the person

The conversations gave Grace a view of the people behind their professional identities. The original account recalls one scientist discussing a formal outfit he had worn for years, and another expressing an enthusiastic wish to look different from everyone else. Their preferences brought humor and individuality into the design process.

For a designer, these exchanges matter. A shared occasion still leaves room for very different relationships with clothes. Someone may want a familiar sense of formality; someone else may welcome the chance to try a new silhouette. Listening gives the work a personal starting point before fabric and construction take shape.

The ceremony brought professional lives into a formal public setting. Grace's designs considered how each person might inhabit that moment: the line around the face, the shape of a jacket, and the smaller choices that make an outfit feel considered.

Measurements across cities

The preparation extended through Shanghai, Beijing, San Francisco, New York and Hong Kong. In the retrospective, Grace describes the challenge of bringing the work together around people with busy lives in different parts of the world.

Back at the GRACE CHEN design center, 71 individual body models were created for the project. They formed part of a process that moved between measurements, drawings, trial garments and finished pieces.

The workshop photographs make that process tangible. One shows fabric being cut by hand; another shows a garment being developed on a form. Elsewhere, a shirt collar is adjusted on its wearer. Each image brings a different scale of attention into view, from the outline of a garment to the position of an edge close to the skin.

Cutting by hand in the workshop.

Developing the garment on a dress form.

Chinese references in the cut

For the shirts, Grace developed a modified V-shaped neckline. The design used a flowing line in place of the conventional bow tie. In the original account, its structure is connected to hanfu, while its continuous curve is likened to the movement of a calligraphic stroke.

That connection gives Chinese aesthetics a precise place in the garment. It can be followed in a line around the neck and in the way the shirt sits within the jacket. The cultural reference becomes part of how the clothes are constructed and worn.

Adjusting the shirt neckline during a fitting.

A sleeve designed for movement

Grace also reconsidered the sleeve and armhole structure. The retrospective describes Song-brocade jackets that incorporate a sleeve shape drawn from English hunting jackets, with the intention of allowing easier movement of the arms.

Here, the combination is specific: Chinese brocade, a tailored jacket, and a construction reference chosen to address movement. The relationship between them begins with the wearer. A structured jacket asks the designer to consider what happens when the person inside it reaches, gestures or raises an arm.

The starting point is a practical one. A material and a construction method from different traditions come together around the same question: how will a person move in this garment?

A jacket on the dress form in the atelier.

The name inside

Inside the clothing, personalized embroidered labels carried the wearers' names. The detail was described in the original story as a signature: a small acknowledgment of the particular person for whom the garment had been made.

The label connects the finished outfit to the individual conversations and measurements that preceded it. Alongside the neckline and sleeve, it belongs to a series of decisions made with someone in mind. At an occasion devoted to recognizing achievement, those details keep the person present in the clothes.

Request a private appointment to discuss your occasion and what you would like from your wardrobe.