Article source: Global Times
[Global Times special correspondent Ren Hanfei] Kausten is a figure skater's competition uniform, which is a transliteration of the English word Costume. The original meaning of the word costume is costume, costume, costume, etc. Figure skating does not refer to athletes' costumes as competition uniforms, as in other sports, but retains the transliteration of the word "Kausten". The high degree of integration of figure skating and music and dance determines that the competition uniform of this sport is not only a "battle robe", but also the embodiment of beauty, and the carrier of culture.
Asian Kausten is graceful and beautiful
In recent years, the level and performance of Asian figure skaters represented by China, Japan and South Korea have been greatly improved, and the main elegant and aesthetic style of Asian athletes has become more and more eye-catching. Take the Japanese athlete Yusuke Yushin, who is highly popular in the Chinese, in recent years, Yusheng Yusuke has repeatedly performed the figure skating program "Yin and Yang Division" in major competitions, including winning the championship at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. The image of Yusheng knot string dressed in the style of Yin and Yang Division Cousten is also fixed as an eternal classic in the hearts of figure skating fans around the world. This show is based on the famous Japanese fantasy film "Yin and Yang Division", and the music is also adapted from the theme song of the movie "Luminous Light". It is said that in order to perform the classic actions of the yin and yang division, Yusheng Yuxian also specially consulted the main actor of the movie. In interpreting this image, Kausten, who is mainly white and decorated with purple and gold, is also born out of the kimono hunting suit worn by the yin and yang masters in the movie. Hunting clothes are actually a kind of sportswear worn by ancient Japanese people when hunting in the wild, for convenience, the sleeves and the main body of the clothes are not completely stitched, and the single clothes worn inside can be seen from the shoulders. Some details of the hunting clothes can also distinguish the class and age of the wearers. The music full of harmony sounds, and the feathered strings dressed in the style of kausten dance on the ice, revealing a sense of slaughter mystery in the flow, like an aristocratic prince who crossed from ancient Japan... The black and gold Kausten in Habu's classic show "Origins" and the cherry blossom-like beauty of Kausten in "Spring Is Coming" all arouse the audience's beautiful feelings and the search for japanese culture interpreted by these Kausten.
Also a classic memory in the history of figure skating is a passage of "Liang Zhu" performed by Chinese athlete Chen Lu at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. Accompanied by the Violin Concerto, Chen Lu was dressed in a purple Kausten, the Chinese collar and butterfly embroidery, the cuffs and skirt fluttering and flexible when dancing, like a purple monarch butterfly, the elegant Chinese style with rhythm conquered the audience and judges, and also achieved a breakthrough in the medal table of the Chinese Figure Skating Winter Olympics. In recent years, the Kausten designs of Chinese figure skaters have also inherited this flowing and beautiful gradient color style with light colors as the main tone, supplemented by flexible elements such as rhinestones and tulle, showing the graceful beauty of oriental culture. For example, at the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Kausten worn by Jin Boyang's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was well integrated into the ink elements of Chinese calligraphy; the design inspiration of the pair skaters Wang Shiyue and Liu Xinyu came from the famous Song Dynasty painting "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", the male athlete's Kausten interpreted "mountain", the female athlete's Kausten was like "water", the light and highly elastic mesh fabric created a natural and ethereal artistic mood, and the "mountain" and "water" were like a beautiful green mountain and green water picture scroll spread out on the ice.
Europe and America Kausten are cool and unrestrained
Different from the graceful beauty of Asian figure skaters, many athletes in Europe and the United States tend to prefer a cool and unrestrained style from the style of the show to the design of Kausten. At the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, GDR Ice Queen Caterina Witte made her debut in a cool blue feather dress, setting a precedent for cool elements such as feathers, rhinestones, sequins and lace on the ice rink. In this competition, Caterina also wore another set of bright red Kausten. Her Kausten caused a lot of controversy because of her too exposed, so the International Skating Federation deliberately issued a series of regulations to restrict the overly sexy design of female athletes, which the figure skating community called "Katerina Regulations". At the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, the French black female player Suria Bonali, with a bright red Cowsten with a golden hook and a wide black waistband, accompanied by a passionate "Spanish Matador" march, the strength of the contestants to the difficult action to launch an impact, her fighting spirit and hot Cousten, to the audience of all countries left a deep impression.
European and American athletes Kausten are not blindly taking the cool and unrestrained route, they are also very good at storytelling. In 2014, at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Yulia Kopnitskaya performed an unforgettable ice dance with the theme song of the movie "Schindler's List", she was dressed in an elegant red Kausten, although concise but direct, the beginning and end of the show Kopnitskaya's gaze back, hailed as a classic, as if the only bright color of life in the movie "Schindler's List" - the little girl in red stepped out of the screen. In 2014, American athletes Meryl Davis and Charlie White wore Kausten on the ice to perform the love story of "Romeo and Juliet", and the fluffy sleeves were full of Renaissance style, successfully bringing the audience into the plot.
East and west merge and achieve each other
The famous Chinese wedding designer Wang Weiwei was a figure skater when she was a teenager, and she has designed a number of Kausten for Many well-known American figure skaters such as Nancy Kriegan and Guan Yingshan in the oriental cultural background, which shows that fashion and figure skating have always been inseparable, and in the design of Kausten, the East and the West have gradually blended.
Yusei Yushin once performed "The Phantom of the Opera", and he was wearing a black and white coat of black and white, black and red, with a mysterious and feminine power. The famous Russian female athlete Medvedeva has also successfully borrowed japanese styles, accompanied by the music of "Memoirs of a Geisha", wearing a kimono style Kausten dancing on the ice, perfectly blending the artistic charm of the East and the West. At the 2010 Figure Skating World Championships, Japan's female athlete Ando Maggie's blue and gold Egyptian style Kausten received praise, and her choice of music came from the movie "Cleopatra".
However, not all cross-cultural borrowings are successful. Also at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Russian players Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin wore a set of flesh-colored Kaustens, which borrowed from the Australian Aboriginal style, and the clothing accessories were green leaves and grass ropes. Their Kausten drew criticism from the competition jury for its excessive pursuit of novelty and lack of beauty. Moreover, indigenous chiefs in New South Wales, Australia, have also spoken out in the local media for distorting aboriginal culture.