Biography

Haijia Gao (b. 2003) is a fashion stylist, creative director, photographer, and makeup artist working across fashion photography, moving image, and fashion styling. Her practice is centred on cinematic imagery, embodied perception, and emotionally charged visual storytelling, exploring the relationship between the body and the external world. Through the fusion of fashion aesthetics and experimental image-making, she seeks to translate emotion, bodily gesture, material texture, and spatial atmosphere into visually perceptible experiences.

She studied Fashion Design at California College of the Arts, where she also took courses in printmaking. This cross-disciplinary experience established an early sensitivity to materiality, image layering, and visual texture that continues to inform her practice. She later attended the International Introduction to the Study of Fashion (IISF) programme at University of the Arts London, where her creative focus gradually shifted from womenswear design toward image-making and visual storytelling, eventually leading her to pursue the Media pathway with a deeper focus on fashion image and visual communication. She is currently studying Fashion Styling and Production at London College of Fashion, while further developing her photographic practice through the Better Lives programme. Moving across fashion design, styling, photography, and moving image, Gao has developed an interdisciplinary creative practice rooted in fashion imagery, while extending into cinematic expression and character-driven visual storytelling.

Her practice consistently centres around “character” and “atmosphere.” Rather than working within fixed themes or overtly theoretical frameworks, she relies on intuition to capture the human states that resonate with her most deeply — subtle emotional shifts, psychological presence, and bodily expression. Her work is not simply concerned with the presentation of fashion, but with the emotional and psychological qualities of a person, treating clothing, styling, and image-making as extensions of character, mood, and inner presence. At the same time, she continues to explore the relationship between individuals and their surrounding environments, focusing on the delicate connections between people, space, nature, objects, clothing, and emotion. Through a restrained and sensitive visual language, she allows emotion to unfold naturally within the image.

In terms of methodology, she is particularly skilled at constructing immersive visual experiences through the integration of styling, hair and makeup, lighting, materiality, props, bodily gesture, and spatial atmosphere. A cinematic sensibility also runs throughout her practice — rather than relying on the immediate impact of a single image, she approaches her work more like a film still, focusing on character construction, emotional pacing, and atmospheric world-building. She is capable of independently overseeing the entire creative process, from concept development and styling construction to shoot production, post-production, and experimental bookmaking. Through her ongoing practice, she continues to explore image-making as a medium for creating more nuanced and emotionally resonant connections between character, atmosphere, and visual storytelling.