Fashion Culture | Intangible Cultural Heritage Masters Interview Series • Group Portrait - Craftsmanship, Intangible Cultural Heritage Masters Face to Face

I've always believed that everything stems from the accumulation of the past. Everything that has been walked, seen, and learned becomes a kind of precipitation. On November 14, 2018, I had the honor of serving as the chief designer of the "Gongyuan Longfeng Chengxiang" project, and through the joint efforts of dozens of intangible cultural heritage masters and more than 200 staff members, a total of 66 sets of costumes and many jewelry were designed and produced. We found that we often used 5 million beads or even 8 million beads or hundreds of thousands of meters of silk thread for a single piece of clothing, which surprised us very, very much! The point of this surprise lies in the ancient craftsmen who engaged in this kind of work, how much work they would have, and what kind of patience and perseverance they would need to pay, which is probably far beyond our current imagination.

Chinese say "slow work out of small work", before we understood this idiom completely literally, and now we can finally experience it from a personally participatory point of view. We experience its slowness, experience its thinness, and finally naturally experience its beauty. Therefore, I would like to pay tribute once again to all the intangible cultural heritage masters involved in this project! KANG Huifang, WANG Xiaoxiao, LI Hailong, ZHENG Guomin, QIAN Yuefang, ZHANG Xiaolin, GU Jiandong, ZUO Shuqiao, ZOU Yingzi... These names, and the hundreds of names behind these names, in a sense, it is precisely because of their adherence and inheritance of intangible cultural heritage crafts that we have such a proud "Gongyuan Dragon and Phoenix Chengxiang" jifu project.

Under the guidance of the masters of intangible cultural heritage, this time we used 40 kinds of intangible cultural heritage crafts in 66 sets of gowns in the "Palace".

In fact, intangible cultural heritage is much more than that, we are using only the tip of the iceberg. This also tells us that there are endless treasures in traditional crafts and craftsmanship, and in fact many people are also engaged in this exploration. And we are more fortunate to have the opportunity to contact so much at once, and there is no restriction and constraint, because of the natural contact under a theme project, which is not a beginning of inheritance and innovation?

Special Planner: Huayi Tomorrow Fashion Content Center

Editorial Director : Huang Wei

Image source: Gong Wei Huang Wei's artistic reconstruction

Feature Editing: Tao Zi Video Production: Feixun Video

Layout Design: BBird . Poplar wood