Name: Claudia Chan Shaw
She is the Company Director and Co-Designer for the knitwear label Vivian Chan Shaw, but she is also a presenter, curator, artist, collector and author!
Scale of Notoriety (out of 5):
3/5
Claudia is very well known for her appearance as a panellist on ABC’s Collectors in which she shared her love and collection for tin robots and wind-up toys. In addition to this, she is well known in the fashion industry for her work with the label Vivian Chan Shaw.
Scale of Influence (out of 5):
2/5
She’s had quite an impact on the fashion and creative’s industry, especially with her creative work in the Sydney Chinese New Year Festival and the Sydney Lunar Festival.
Target Status:
Alive and designing in Sydney!
Background:
Claudia grew up in Sydney as the youngest of four children and with her single mother Vivian. Both of her great grandparents arrived in Australia from China during the Gold Rush, so her family has been established in Australia for quite some time. Although both her grandmother and mother were in the fashion industry, she wanted to steer clear and originally wanted to be a doctor before getting a Bachelor of Visual Communication Design from Sydney College of the Arts. However, she couldn’t avoid what was essentially meant to be and went into partnership with her mother in the brand Vivian Chan Shaw not long after graduating.
She developed a love of pop culture and started collecting tin robots and ray guns in the mid-80s and probably never would have thought it would lead to her being a panellist on ABC’s Collectors where she got her start in television in 2010. She has curated many fashion exhibitions for the brand, the company’s designs are so iconic, that they are in the permanent collection of the Powerhouse Museum.
She expresses her ethnicity and love of robots through her contribution to both the Sydney Chinese New Year Festival and Sydney Lunar Festival. In the 2016-2019 Sydney Chinese New Year Festival, she presented her installation of the Tai Chi Bunnies and in the 2020 Sydney Lunar Festival, she designed the animatronic Robot Rats for the Year of the Rat celebration.
Genetic Makeup:
In addition to having Chinese ancestry, fashion and design are in her blood. Her grandmother owned a children’s fashion boutique called ‘Little Shirley’ in the 1930s, which her mother helped in after school every day, and then she went on to create the label Vivian Chan Shaw which Claudia now works for. Although she wanted to avoid getting into fashion when she left school, blood is thicker than water!
Strengths:
- Creativity and Passion: Claudia brings creativity and passion to everything she does and is constantly looking to inspire and create new designs in both fashion and art.
- Collecting: She’s a seasoned collector, who began collecting at a young age and mastered the art of it as she grew up, she did after all get her TV breakthrough as a result of collecting!
- Designing: The clothes she designs are a beautiful mix of on-trend and timeless.
Weaknesses:
- Struggling to think of a weakness
Special Talents:
Being able to whip out new and innovative designs.
Georgia Robinson is currently studying Journalism and International Studies (Majoring in Spanish) at the University of Technology Sydney. She is an aspiring journalist with a keen interest in global affairs by advocating multicultural Australian perspectives on a global scale. Georgia is an intrepid traveller with a curious mind and is inspired by SBS reportings.
Instagram: @georgiarobinson13
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