The Young Designer Behind Arca’s Living LED Look

Worn by Arca in the new issue of AnOther, HongJi Yan’s flexible screens turn the body into a moving image. Here, the 23-year-old designer talks about making fashion impossible to ignore

HongJi Yan used to steal his mum’s Cartier watches and wear them to primary school in Beijing. On an eight-year-old’s wrist, they were difficult to miss. “I always felt left out,” he says. “I wanted to show people I was the one they should watch out for.” Now 23 and one year out of BA Fashion Design: Womenswear at Central Saint Martins, HongJi is still making things designed to be seen.

In the Autumn/Winter 2026 issue of AnOther Magazine, Arca wears one of HongJi’s flexible LED screens as a skirt, with another wrapped around her head, photographed by Anders Edström and styled by Akeem Smith. Across both, her own face appears through the visible grid of LEDs, multiplying and distorting the body beneath. The pieces grew out of a commission Smith had given HongJi for the livestream premiere of Arca’s new album, XXXXX, broadcast from an abandoned factory in Barcelona at night.

First mounted on heat-mouldable medical thermoplastic, then held to the body with Velcro and mesh, each screen is closer in construction to an orthopaedic brace than conventional clothing. Those custom-made for Arca were much smaller descendants of others from HongJi’s graduate collection, which saw a screen near-swallow its wearer to the knees, like a billboard with legs. On the screen, the world continues where the body should or would otherwise be, over-lit by the cheap glow of a low-resolution display. Behind it, the body is wrought in a padded belt of power banks and a harness to which a camera is attached. At first, his tutors were sceptical: “This is not going to be on the runway,” one told him. “It’s so, so dangerous.” The model, after all, could barely see where they were going.

The screens developed from an idea HongJi began exploring in 2023 during a trip back to Beijing after a year of industry placements, including one at Off-White. “The work you do feels like almost anyone could do it. I felt a bit invisible,” he says of his internships. Back in the Chinese capital, he became interested in young graduates turning to food delivery and livestreaming – forms of work that, to him, create a peculiar kind of visibility. He talks about delivery drivers as both impossible to miss and strangely difficult to remember: neon panels, reflective strips and helmets announce their presence while obscuring the person underneath. Livestreamers, meanwhile, can display their faces for hours while still withholding almost everything about themselves. HongJi’s screens perform a similar trick. They make the wearer hyper-visible while allowing the physical body to disappear behind its own image. “There was a scandal with an old lady who made herself look like a really young girl. But one time, she forgot to turn her filter on,” he remembers.

As part of his research, HongJi spoke to taxi drivers and massage therapists about how Beijing had changed. “They said they only talk when they’re at work. Off work, they just go into the flat they rent, stay in their room and don’t talk to anyone.” For him, this growing separation between physical and digital life is not necessarily liberating. “It’s convenient that everything is online, but it really destroys human interaction.”

Much of HongJi’s visual language comes from the same screens his work mimics. “I can’t concentrate, I’ll just be scrolling on my phone, something pops up, and I think, ‘Oh, that’s so fun!’ When I was making my final collection I deleted TikTok. Right after, I downloaded it again because I get so much inspiration from there.” He says he has never been inspired by a museum. “I’ve always liked modern things.”

His first attempt at making a body disappear involved taping an iPad to it and displaying that which an iPhone behind it could see on its camera. He later sourced flexible screens in China. “I didn’t want to use a flatscreen, that would be too easy,” he says. “I could’ve just used a TV, but I wanted to make something more flattering on the body.”

HongJi was already an Arca fan when Smith first contacted him. In March, a blunt and urgent email arrived asking for his screens for Confessions II, The Film, which Smith was working on with Madonna’s team. “I thought it was a scam,” HongJi remembers, but within days he and the screens were on their way to set in an Uber XL. While setting up backstage, he looked up to find Arca standing in front of him. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love you.’ And she was like, ‘Love you too!’”

The look was filmed but did not make the final cut. Arca, however, had not forgotten the screens. Not long after, Smith got back in touch. This time, she wanted something custom, with no strict brief beyond a series of references and a mood: restrained and “a bit sexy”. Asked what drew them together creatively, HongJi pauses. “We both make art as a way of expressing our feelings. Although everyone says that, you can feel the emotions when listening to her. I hope people can feel that when they look at my work too.”

Until then, much of what HongJi had made had been experimental, with little expectation that anyone would actually ask to wear it. “The commission for Arca proved to me that my conceptual designs are usable – that someone like her is interested in my work. And I proved to myself that there’s still a place for me to do what I enjoy most.” Arca has since told him he can DM her whenever he has a new idea. HongJi and two friends are now setting up a studio together, continuing to test how far the line between clothing, technology and the body can be pushed. He jokes that their next commission could come from somewhere entirely different. “Maybe some medical company will come to find us, wanting something that’s medical but also wearable … ”

At Saint Martins, HongJi had fitted the screens himself backstage. For Arca’s livestream, without a visa for Barcelona, he had to entrust the job to a friend of a friend. “I was so scared. What if they didn’t know where to put it? What if the screen just blacked out?” That night, he watched from his flat with his friends. “I had it on my MacBook recording. My boyfriend was also recording on his MacBook. I was also recording on my phone and my iPad. So basically there were like six devices filming it together.” On all six screens was Arca, wearing a screen playing her own face.