Nine times in Milan Fashion Week, each time Zhao Huizhou will ask himself: Who am I? How do I present China? She combines intangible cultural heritage with fashion art, pushing Chinese style to the forefront of fashion time and time again.
Swipe left or right to see more
This article was published in the magazine China Women
Expressing Chinese culture in clothing design with the help of intangible cultural heritage elements is what Zhao Huizhou has done unremittingly over the years. "It's a collision — a collision of the past and the future, tradition and the present. Let Chinese culture go to the world, let clothing tell the story of China. ”
In 1997, Zhao Huizhou began to start a business, founding yizhihui fashion group, HUI hui women's clothing brand, and together with the Shenzhen Women and Children's Development Foundation, launched the Hui fund. She not only insists on designing poverty alleviation, helping embroidery girls to change their lives with their hands, but also uses practical actions to make the intangible cultural heritage skills hidden in the mountains step onto the world fashion stage through "design".
Fashion show shows the feminine spirit
Zhao Huizhou (center) Founder and chief designer of Shenzhen Yizhihui (HUI) Fashion Group, representative of the 12th National Congress of Chinese Women, and national March 8th Red Flag Bearer. Won the "Golden Top Award", the highest award of Chinese fashion design
In September 2021, under the epidemic situation, Zhao Huizhou went to Milan alone to participate in the 2022 Spring/Summer Milan Fashion Week, and her theme series of "China Women's Book" skillfully transformed Chinese intangible cultural heritage elements into fashion language, presenting a beautiful visual feast in the world fashion capital.
Originating in Yongzhou, Hunan Province, the "Nüshu" is the only female-specific script found in the world so far, and it is also a magical cultural phenomenon in human history. The font of the female book is beautiful, the shape is elegant, and the form is flowing. Zhao Huizhou takes this as a design inspiration to perfectly combine women's books with fashion, express women's thinking through clothing, and give women more power. This concept coincides with the spirit of contemporary women's independence and autonomy, coinciding with the trend of increasing attention to women's power, so it has attracted much attention, and "China Women's Book" has become a highlight of Milan Fashion Week.
Delicate printed text, modern cut silhouettes, crisp color combinations and subtle and slightly exaggerated translucent fabrics give "China Women's Book" a soft and inner texture. Although Zhao Huizhou adopts traditional elements, the style presented is modern rather than retro, completing the crossing between ancient and modern.
In Zhao Huizhou's view, the export of Chinese culture is a kind of infiltration, and it is not necessary to analyze Chinese character symbols and expound Chinese culture without much effort, and it can express its core with ease. She is proud to be the only offline Chinese brand at Milan Fashion Week, and HUI has done just naturally.
This is Zhao Huizhou's ninth time to compete in Milan Fashion Week. "Europe is at the forefront of international fashion, and being able to express design concepts and tell Chinese stories in Chinese culture shows that we are becoming more and more determined in our cultural self-confidence." After the return of Milan, she did not stop, and then "translated" the "China Women's Book" to Shenzhen, landed in the 2022 Shenzhen Spring and Summer Fashion Week, as the "grand finale" for the domestic audience to present a beautiful national tide show, once again pushed the Chinese intangible cultural heritage to people's vision.
Self-confidence is gradually accumulated. In 2018, Zhao Huizhou released the "Girl Up" fashion show at Beijing International Fashion Week. From the buds to the gorgeous blooms, the beauty of women is vividly exerted by her. "Girl Up" has made bold innovations in fabrics, high-tech technology has turned the softness of silk into structure, and with traditional embroidery such as Miao embroidery and Yi embroidery, it has formed a strong visual contrast with modern fabrics, which is eye-catching, and Zhao Huizhou has won the "Golden Top Award" of China Fashion Design in 2018 at the China Fashion Awards.
"Design in China" amazes Milan Fashion Week
Zhao Huizhou works at the 2022 Milan runway
The association with the intangible cultural heritage is both accidental and inevitable for Zhao Huizhou. In 2014, Zhao Huizhou was elected as the "New Chinese Wear" designer of Beijing APPEC, and at that time, she had already ranked among the top ten designers in China with her simple, natural, fresh and elegant design style. As a window and carrier for the development of Chinese culture, the design of "New Zhongshi" should reflect Chinese elements and highlight traditional culture, so she began to systematically explore, consult various cultural history books, and use a large number of traditional crafts such as Su embroidery in the design to achieve the internationalization and modern expression of Chinese elements.
This was a breakthrough attempt, and Zhao Huizhou benefited a lot. In 2015, as "China's best designer", she was recommended by the China Garment Association to participate in Sino-Italian cultural exchanges in Italy, becoming the first Chinese designer to appear in Milan. The goal was to get the West to recognize Eastern design. But at the same time, she also has a dilemma: do you express yourself in the design, or do you follow the Western trend? Expressing oneself may not be recognized due to cultural differences; following the trend, it is inevitable to follow the trend, pick up people's teeth and wisdom, and not be recognized. After thinking about it again and again, she determined her own design idea: East and West are compatible, and things are compatible.
In that group of fashion shows called "Empty Boxes of Memory", she did not choose oriental cultural symbols such as Xiangyun and Dragon Phoenix with great fanfare, but quietly integrated traditional handicrafts such as paper-cutting and embroidery into fashion, which made her designs warm and warm. "The Empty Box of Memory" became the biggest "unexpected surprise" of that Milan Fashion Week.
"Going Out" allowed her to see different fashion styles, and also found that "italian and French high-end fashion brands also have a heritage of traditional culture, and they do a good job." "If you want to learn from the design techniques of others, you need to first understand your own traditional culture, including the artistic expression of Chinese culture, "go out, but also go back." So far, Chinese culture has become an indispensable element of her design.
Su embroidery, Miao embroidery, Yi embroidery... Zhao Huizhou began to make great use of Chinese intangible cultural heritage elements in his design, extensively contacted embroidery girls, communicated with craftsmen, and felt the most primitive art from the most original place. "The kind of crossing from ancient times to modern times brings me a kind of inspiration across time and space, inspiring a unique design language and enriching the design heritage."
"Design" the future of splendid embroidery with the embroidery girl
In 2013, the Guizhou Provincial Women's Federation launched the "Splendid Embroidery Plan" to promote the development of women's handicraft characteristic industries, and Zhao Huizhou was invited to participate in it. To this end, she visited the mountainous areas and put forward the concept of "design poverty alleviation", hoping to change the life of the embroidered women in the mountains. "But it's difficult to do it with one or two designers, and it takes a bunch of designers to join in." In 2016, Zhao Huizhou initiated the establishment of the "HUI Fund" and donated 1 million yuan as a start-up fund to help craftsmen and benefit more embroiderers.
In the mountains of Guizhou, there are designated villages of the HUI Fund. Zhao Huizhou leads the team into the mountains twice a year to communicate with the embroidery girls. She went from house to house to learn about the current situation of the inheritance of local intangible cultural heritage. Some embroidery girls are more than eighty years old and are still weaving ancient native cloth, because there is no market, the soil cloth is getting less and less; some hemp fabrics, which are only used on special occasions, are now nearly extinct, and at the same time there is hemp cultivation; the traditional headdresses worn by women are very exquisite, but they are no longer visible on the heads of young people... All of this made Zhao Huizhou regret. "I was thinking about how to introduce them into modern design, how to expand the application market, and make them 'alive' again?"
In the new design, Zhao Huizhou improved the native cloth and made it into home products such as hair bands and pillows; introduced traditional handmade batik fabrics into the costumes of natural literary and artistic styles; and skillfully integrated exquisite embroidery into couture works... "We just want everyone to feel the ingenuity of the craftsmen, because the clothing is not only worn, but also the expression of artistic aesthetics and inner feelings." In Chuxiong, Yunnan, she and her team spent three years combing traditional Yi costumes for the local song and dance troupe, which promoted the development of Yi costume art.
"Why does a good work have a soul? Because behind it is intertwined with various emotions. When you get this emotion, you capture the design inspiration. "The conditions in the mountains are poor, there are many mosquitoes in summer, and the winter is wet and cold, and the saddest "off" is to go to the dry toilet. Now recalling Zhao Huizhou smiled lightly: "The designer is not so squeamish, and everything needs to be paid." "There is also sweetness in the bitterness," every time we were about to arrive at the village, the embroidery ladies ran out to greet them from afar, and everyone ate together in the woods and drank wine in the rice paddies, and the whole communication process was a collision and fusion of emotions. ”
In the mountains, the HUI Fund helps embroiderers in a variety of ways: setting up embroidery workshops to bring orders to the embroiderers; directly buying the embroidery of the embroiderers and then redesigning them; or providing design manuscripts for the embroiderers to embroider according to the manuscript. "We also invited embroidery girls to the city, let them participate in the design, and went to the store to diy make it on the spot, so that they knew that these embroideries can bring a different experience to young people." At the same time, the HUI Fund has also extended its "tentacles" overseas, joining hands with the Italian Colini Fund to help craftsmen. "The Colini Fund has many proven practices in the protection of intangible cultural heritage in Italy, and we can gain more experience by exchanging them."
It is the new year, but Zhao Huizhou has opened the "overtime mode" - in February 2022, she will go to Milan again and appear at Milan Fashion Week again. Why are you so obsessed with every show? Because I want to be a high-end luxury brand in China. She knows that compared with the world's big brands, Chinese brands are just starting out and still need to be cultivated by the market. But HUI products have been sold worldwide, which is a gratifying start, she harbored a small "ambition" and set herself a "five-year plan": "Continue to represent Chinese brands on the international stage and speak out, and achieve equal dialogue with international brands." It also allows more people to understand Chinese culture and read Chinese stories through clothing. ”