Wilde Origins
The long road home. Written by our Founder.
Belonging
If love is innate, then nature is our first love. And it feels natural because we are born into it. For many of us, this carefree love feels most alive during childhood, before societal conditioning. As for me, I loved being outside, despite living in the concrete jungle of Hong Kong. It was a city surrounded by mountains and the sea — both extremely safe and accessible. It was easy to be wild and free.
Then I moved to the States, and began to explore this connection through art and poetry. I started to create whatever came naturally, never thinking too hard as the ideas flowed freely. Looking back, my AP art portfolio is the most important message I have ever written to myself. But at the time, its significance was unrecognised for more than a decade. It told the story of a girl navigating through a material world in search of meaning in a state of deep void. Her journey is a symbol of longing for reconnection with one self, with nature. Ironically, the first piece — a black-and-white drawing of a mannequin surrounded by artificial objects — is the only monochrome piece in a series defined by colour.
Though I had written an explanation for each piece, I decided to edit it out and let your interpretation take the lead. What I will reveal is the homecoming scene: the final rewilding when she becomes one with the tree. I had painted myself and my long journey home. In a way, I was lost at the time (who wasn’t as a teenager?) and that search for meaning led me astray for many years. It’s the first time I’m sharing this online, so I hope you enjoy my portfolio below.
Wayfinding
When I applied to design school, I wanted to get into fashion. But I knew I’d be adding to a world already drowning in waste. Throughout university, this tension never left. I studied biomimicry, cradle-to-cradle design, and zero-waste principles. Early on, I had learned that design should be about problem solving, and not merely creating for the sake of money, beauty, or excess. Dieter Rams, a designer I respect, said that good design is honest, long-lasting, environmentally-friendly, useful, and as little design as possible. The more I learned, the harder it felt to do right by all our stakeholders, including Mother Nature. My inner conflict was like a deer caught in the headlights. I wanted to create, but every direction felt like I’d be adding to the wastepile in a world already filled with it.
For my design thesis, I dove straight into the wastepile. I spent weeks studying primary kids at school and inside their lunch halls. What I witnessed was S.A.D. — figuratively and literally, the Standard American Diet — with mountains of disposable packaging and poor dietary habits that felt disconnected from the essence of a healthy human, and healthy planet. During this time, I was cooking and juicing a lot. There were plenty of natural fibers waiting to be transformed. I didn’t know how, but I wanted to turn them into biodegradable (and edible) plates. What I made was rarely functional or aesthetic. But it went beyond the product into systems rethinking. Professors dismissed my project as unfinished and out of scope. In a way, I had also disappointed myself. Nothing was truly accomplished, and I had no real product to showcase. For years, I quietly carried that project like a grand failure (until recently). I finally feel safe to share this project with you, so here are a few slides from my project.
Homecoming
Following graduation, I wanted to make an impact, but I couldn’t bring myself to work as a designer producing more stuff that would choke up our beautiful planet. I decided to go digital, and eventually landed my dream job in biotechnology. I wanted to believe that healing human health could also heal our planet. But the paradox of it all was that I was chronically burnt out. Despite my rising career success, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I wasn’t where I was meant to be.
A series of personal and professional struggles amidst Covid brought me into a state of chronic depression. So when the new year rolled in, I welcomed 2023 as the year of healing and reconnection. I took the gap year I never had, then everything started to shift. I was alive through volunteering and conservation. I also started to understand the depth of our polycrisis — the interconnected nature of current and emerging risks unfolding simultaneously, amplifying one another. But I also witnessed firsthand how regenerative agriculture restores soil health, fuels biodiversity, and protects our land and water. I learned that it’s not just a method of farming, but a way of life, living in harmony with nature. I found power in community through all the wonderful volunteers, farmers, activists and friends I met along the way whose love for our planet is far stronger than profit and greed.
This gave me courage to set out on this crazy expedition to rewild Planet Earth with the foods that give us meaning. And so, Wilde was born, with love for Our Planet and a longing to preserve this beautiful place for the sake of my own future, my little sister’s, and the generations after us.
Thank you for being here.
With love,
Jenny, Founder
