Paper clips, plastic coffee stirrers, broken umbrellas, are just the tip of the iceberg of found objects that entrepreneur and fashion designer Shelly Xu, uses to create art and high fashion.
A 2013 graduate of Columbia College, Xu, wasted no time in launching her website, Shelly Xu Design, which features her designs of women’s couture and accessories.
Xu, originally from Anhui, China, emigrated to Lexington, KY, when she was 10, after a three-year stay in Japan. Her parents were professors at the University of Kentucky. Her mother taught digital media and her father, physics. They now reside in the San Diego area, where her father works as an engineer and her mother is a computer scientist.
As an economics and political science major in college, Xu pursued a career in what many Columbia undergraduates do to pay off their prohibitive student loans; finance and consulting. But after a summer internship at a top consulting firm, she realized she had to be true to her real passion: fashion, art and design.
Through her talent in graphic arts and communications, she caught the eye of the marketing department at eBay Enterprise, where she works as an marketing associate handling the Toys R Us account, while continues to create her innovative designs.
Some may say starting their own fashion line is an extraordinary leap of faith, if not downright crazy, but after you view her work and see how her wildly creative mind transforms the most mundane objects into art and fashion, you will realize her venture is not just a whim, but its her destiny.
