On February 26, 2022, the China Silk Museum celebrated its 30th anniversary. On this day, the "National Silk Fashion Museum" created by the China Silk Museum and the Hangzhou Tower was officially opened. Over the past 30 years, clothing and fashion have been an important part of the collection, research and display of the National Silk Museum, and the fashion model is one of the four major characteristics of the National Silk Museum. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the museum, Zhao Feng, director of the China Silk Museum, reviewed and looked forward to the fashion road of the National Silk Museum with a heartfelt article.
On the afternoon of February 26, 2022, we finally opened a National Silk Fashion Museum in the Hangzhou Building, the most fashionable and popular city in Hangzhou, on the 30th anniversary of the China Silk Museum.
The National Silk Fashion Museum is located in the Hangzhou Tower
China Silk Museum is a textile and clothing museum born in silk, long in silk, into silk, its birth was the national tourism administration project, issued by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage to support the collection of cultural relics, the Ministry of Textile Industry and the China Silk Company approved the establishment, is a cultural and tourism industry cooperation museum. Since There is no national textile museum in China, and there is no national costume museum, the China Silk Museum has naturally become a thematic museum in this industry. Wu Wenying, then Minister of Textile Industry, was appointed as the director of our preparatory committee, and clothing and fashion were naturally an important part of it.
From the establishment of the China Silk Museum in 1992, to the construction of the Fashion Museum in 2016 when it was renovated and expanded, to the opening of the National Silk Fashion Museum in the Hangzhou Building in 2022, the fashion model of one of the four major characteristics of the China Silk Museum, its purpose is to make cultural relics come alive and make life better, specifically based on the collection and research of the thematic museum, the launch of exhibitions, social education and other museum products, play the role of the museum cultural hub, serve the community, serve the public, integrate into the fashion circle, and cultivate fashion aesthetics. Advocate a fashion lifestyle and empower people to live a better life.
1. The National Silk Fashion Museum in the Hangzhou Mansion
The Guosi Fashion Museum is a fashion special museum of the China Silk Museum, and its positioning is a special zone of the Guosi.
Why choose to open in Hangzhou Tower? Although the idea came from Ms. Ye Hong, who was then the director of the Hangzhou Culture and Tourism Image Promotion Center and a member of the Guosi Academic Committee, it was she who brought Guosi and Hangzhou to cooperate, but this project is actually in line with guosi's long-term vision and efforts, and it is a natural success at this time.
We are all saying that everything should be centered on the people. The main function of a type of public welfare institution is public cultural services, and the audience is naturally the center of our work. Specific to museums, the International Association of Fairs has always advocated integration into the community and service to the community. Although Guosi has different community affiliations, one of them is the community associated with silk textile clothing, or the community that loves clothing culture, including traditional clothing or fashion clothing and other categories. The way of service is to attract people from the community to the museum, and the other is to let the museum take the initiative to go to the community and enter the community. So we have always said that anyone who loves clothing culture is our community and what we should serve. Hangzhou Tower is the place with the highest concentration of fashion brands in Hangzhou, the place with the highest concentration of fashion culture crowds, and the iconic location of Hangzhou fashion, which can certainly become a heavy place for us to create fashion models. According to Yang Jianwu, director of the Zhejiang Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau, the fashion of the national silk and the fashion of Hangzhou are right.
Inside the exhibition at the National Silk Fashion Museum
In fact, the entry of museums into mainstream commercial spaces is not a new topic in the world. In 1995, when the China Silk Museum held an exhibition in Montreal, Canada, it put a loom in the window of the mall in the city center to attract the audience to visit the exhibition. Between 2017 and 2018, the V&A Museum, the world's top fashion museum, held an exhibition in the shopping city of Swire Square, and held an exhibition entitled "Shoes: Pleasure and Pain" in Shanghai, Chengdu Ocean Taikoo Li, Guangzhou Taikoo Hui, Beijing Sanlitun Taikoo Li and Hong Kong Pacific Place, which mainly exhibited various shoes in history, and also invited guosi's textile conservators to cooperate at that time, which brought a strong impact to the audience.
1995 Montreal Botanical Garden, Canada, "Silkworm Moth: The Great Silk" poster and looms in shopping mall windows
Look at the famous Shanghai K11, which also opened an art museum on the ground floor of the mall. Although they are private cultural institutions, not yet museum collections, the concept of K11 is novel and successful, on the one hand, it is loved by the audience, a large number of visitors come here every day, on the other hand, it greatly enhances the cultural attributes of the mall and becomes an important symbol of K11.
So why don't we?
Under the guidance of the Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, with the support and guidance of the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics, we quickly reached a consensus with the top management of the Hangzhou Tower, and the Hangzhou Tower took out two spaces of more than 500 square meters on the 5th floor of the new Block B, introduced the content of the fashion section of the China Silk Museum, and hosted the National Silk Fashion Museum here. The National Silk Treats it as a small branch of its own, setting up three areas of Chinese and foreign fashion, the window of the National Silk and the fashion classroom, under the premise of ensuring safety, it holds four fashion exhibitions and four picture exhibitions every year, and launches no less than one interactive fashion course every week. The first exhibition launched at the opening was "The Outline of Fashion", an exhibition of a brief history of Western fashion, with more than 80 pieces of Chinese and foreign fashion collections from the 18th to 20th centuries. At the same time, there is also the "Jindi Kaiguang: National Silk 30 Years Exhibition Series Poster Exhibition". In the fashion classroom, we will join hands with the Fashion College of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University to launch four first-month courses: Fashion Secrets, Dior's Waist and Pleats, Goddess Temperament, Lectures on the Past Life and Present Life of High Heels, and Experience Courses such as Silver Jewelry Handicraft.
Fashion classroom in the National Silk Fashion Museum
On February 27, 2022, the handicraft experience was held in the Guosi Fashion Classroom
Second, the fashion road of the national silk
In fact, we have always wanted to become a fashion museum in China, and this dream has been done for many years. Of course, it is not to change the name, but to let people know that the China Silk Museum is China's fashion museum. To this end, we have gone through several stages: starting with fashion collections, then fashion exhibitions, then fashion art exhibitions, and then international fashion exhibitions.
In fact, when we first started to build the museum, we began to collect modern famous silk products, but most of them are raw silk and white blanks as raw materials, although the quality is good, the artistry is not strong. After about 10 years, we started doing several exhibitions that reflected modern costumes.
1. Modern and contemporary fabrics and clothing exhibition
The first exhibition was "A Century of Fashion: A Retrospective Exhibition of Chinese Costume Art in the 20th Century", launched in 2004, consisting of four parts: "Backs of the Imperial Dynasty" (1900-1912), "Colorful World Elephants" (1912-1949), "Red Flag Fluttering" (1949-1976) and "Carnival Season" (1976-2000), reviewing the changes in China's popular fashion in the century from 1900 to 2000, showing the evolution of China's century-old costume art. In addition, fashion objects such as pop music, movies, vehicles, and books from related periods are also reflected as backgrounds. The second exhibition was "Revolution and Romance: A Retrospective of Chinese Silk Design, 1957-1978", launched in 2009. At that time, our museum just collected a batch of silk samples produced in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai at that time, and also got the manuscripts of a group of silk designers in the silk sample factory at that time, so we planned this exhibition. The whole exhibition focuses on the development process of silk pattern design in the mainland (especially in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai) during the period of socialist planned economy from 1957 to 1978, showing how red and beauty are combined in silk design.
A Century of Fashion: A Retrospective Exhibition of Chinese Costume Art in the 20th Century (2004)
Revolution and Romance: A Retrospective of Chinese Silk Design, 1957-1978 (2009)
2. Fashion retrospective exhibition
For museums with scarce resources and collections, it is difficult to obtain a large number of archaeological artifacts, so we must broaden our thinking, from collecting silk to collecting all textiles. I checked the textile and fashion departments in the world's major museums and found that everyone pays great attention to the modern plate, and there is no material limitation such as silk, so the exhibition can be better and better. Inspired by this, we believe that we can start from the collection, create a theme exhibition similar to "fashion of the year" every year, comb through a period of history through an exhibition, and build it into a brand platform that allows enterprises, designers to be displayed and exchanged, and finally establish a friendly cooperative relationship with the China Silk Museum.
Also in 2009, we began to plan fashion collections and exhibitions more systematically. Finally decided to hold a fashion retrospective exhibition every year from 2011, the first five sessions invited Zhejiang Sci-Tech University Feng Hui team to be responsible for curating, each exhibition has a theme, such as the 2012 "crossing" theme, the purpose is to find the relationship between Chinese tradition and the present; there is also the 2013 "new life" theme and 2014 "dream building" theme, "building dreams" is actually related to the renovation and expansion of our museum. In 2016, the G20 Summit was held in Hangzhou, and the National Silk Market also completed the renovation and expansion and reopened in September, so the theme of that year became "Butterfly". This series of exhibitions has been until now, in the 10th exhibition in 2020, we gave the theme of "Cloud Club", and the fashion collection collected in the past 10 years has been selected for exhibition, taking the meaning of gathering. 2021 is the beginning of a new 10-year fashion retrospective, we launched the "Fashion +" series, the first exhibition invited Professor Wu Haiyan of the China Academy of Art to lead, the theme is "The Art of Time: When Embroidery Crosses Fashion".
Discover Fashion: Fashion Retrospective 2011
Yunhui: Fashion Retrospective 2020
The Art of Time: When Embroidery Travels Through Fashion
3. Fashion art exhibition
In the process of planning these theme exhibitions, we encountered a problem: when the requirements of the exhibit categories are more comprehensive, it is difficult to achieve that each category is a fine product. The event planning of fashion museums generally has two directions: one is the boutique category; the other is the encyclopedia category. At the same time as the launch of the fashion retrospective, the designers we faced expressed different desires, and we felt that we could not simply focus on the social changes of clothing, but also reflect the changes in fashion art. Therefore, we joined hands with the Fashion Media Group and the China Fashion Designers Association to jointly sponsor a major exhibition reflecting The Chinese fashion art after the reform and opening up. Because 2012-2013 coincided with the 20th anniversary of the China Silk Museum, the Fashion Media Group and the China Fashion Designers Association, this exhibition is also celebrating their 20th anniversary. We invited Professor Liu Jun of Shenzhen Vocational College of Art as the curator, entitled "Image of the Times: Chinese Fashion Art (1992-2012)", which is divided into three sections: "Origin", "Fusion" and "Construction", showing the artistic achievements of Chinese fashion design in the past 20 years, representing and reflecting the overall level of contemporary Chinese fashion design, and publicizing the transformation and strength of China from "Made in China" to "Chinese design", which is actually a review of the development of Contemporary Chinese fashion in the global context for 20 years.
Images of the Times: Chinese Fashion Art (1992-2012)
4. International fashion
In addition to Chinese fashion, we also pay attention to other international fashion cultures, collecting information and collections from many sources. From 2010 to 2015, we collected a large number of Chinese and Western fashions, with as many as 40,000 pieces of Western fashion and almost 20,000 pieces of Chinese fabrics and fashions. In 2016, the newly built fashion hall has greatly improved its conditions, with temporary exhibition halls and multi-functional halls, which can hold large-scale international fashion exhibitions and become an international fashion museum.
As a result, we set up "From Pastoral to City: 400 Years of Western Fashion Exhibition" in the new basic exhibition, "Glory Returns to The Golden: French Silk since 1700" and "Blooming: The Past and Present Life of Lace" in 2017, "Great Times: Fashion in the 1920s" in 2018, "One Clothing and Water: Korean Traditional Textiles and Clothing Exhibition" (in collaboration with the Korean University of Traditional Culture) and "Dior Dior by" in 2019 Dior (1947-1957)" (in collaboration with the Royal Ontario Museum of Canada), launched "Balenciaga: Style and Sculpture" (in collaboration with the V&A Museum in the UK) and "Yan'er Soft White: Western Wedding Dress Exhibition of the 19th-20th Centuries" in 2020, and in 2021 launched the exhibition "Dress in Nature: The Beauty and Responsibility of Clothing".
Glory Returns to The Golden: French Silk since 1700, 2017
Dior Dior by Dior (1947-1957), 2019
Dressing in Nature: The Beauty and Responsibility of Clothing, 2021
Third, the fashion museum facing the world
Our fashion museum, of course, is a fashion museum facing the public, facing the future and facing the world. Fashion has never been something that happens when a country is independent, it is an aspect of globalization. As early as the 1920s, although China had its own Haipai qipao, the fashion of Greater Shanghai had begun to synchronize with the fashion of Paris and London. Famous museums around the world, such as the Fashion Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, are among the best museums in the world, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, the KCI in Kyoto, Japan, the V&A in London, and the Fashion Museum in Paris.
Among them, the British V&A can be regarded as one of the leaders, and it is also a benchmark for us to do fashion museums. We have worked with V&A a lot over the years. Although the early collaboration began in 2006, it was mainly about Dunhuang silk research. In July 2013, we already had a large collection of Western fashion, so I went to V&A with Zhou Yang to learn about the conservation and restoration of textiles and fashion. In April 2014, I went to V&A's fashion warehouse to visit and study, and prepared for our construction of a Western fashion collection. By December 2014, we sent Zhang Guowei and Xu Shanhe to V&A for another two months, which involved all aspects of Western fashion, including classification, naming, registration, system, storage, management, etc., because the management and research of Chinese clothing and cultural relics can be said to be two systems that must be re-learned.
In April 2014, Zhao Feng and V&A personnel took a group photo
In December 2014, Zhao Feng, Zhang Guowei, Xu Shanhe and others took a group photo
After the opening of the new museum of our museum, the fashion style characteristics of the national silk will be more clear. So we take this work further. In October 2016, we invited Sandra Smith, Director of V&A Technology, to our museum to give a lecture and guide the use of adhesives for Western fashion restoration. At the same time, we actively negotiated the introduction of fashion exhibitions, and finally negotiated in 2019 to introduce the Balenciaga exhibition "Style and Plastic Style", but the exhibition just encountered the new crown epidemic and was not implemented until the autumn of 2020. In 2021, we met and cooperated with V&A in Shenzhen, where Design Interconnection introduced "Fashion From Nature", and we were invited to plan a parallel exhibition "Clothes from Everything: China's Past and Present Fashion".
Balenciaga: Style And Plastic, 2020
Clothes from All Things: China's Past and Present Fashion, 2021, Shenzhen
At the same time, we also actively go deep into the activities of the Clothing Committee of the China Museum Association and the International Museum Association. As early as 2010, Guosi actively participated in the International Expo Association Conference held in China, and invited representatives of the clothing committee to visit Guosi, and then visited Katia Johnson in Rosenborg, Denmark, the chairman of the special committee, many times. At the 2019 ICOM Kyoto Congress, I attended IDOM-Costume and spoke at the conference, introducing the fashion initiatives of the China Silk Museum and interacting with clothing and fashion museums from all over the world, especially with Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Australia and France.
Group photo of members of the Clothing Committee of the International Association of Expo, 2019, Kyoto
In 2021, after Guosi officially became the director of the Clothing Committee of the China Federation of Musicians, on the one hand, we promoted various work in 100 similar museums in the United Nations, and expanded the Clothing Committee to all design museums, called the Clothing and Design Museum Committee, which can basically cover fashion museums, on the other hand, it is also more active on behalf of Chinese counterparts to carry out dialogue with the Clothing Committee of the International Association of Expo. Ms. Corinne Thepaut-Cabasset of the Palace of Versailles, France, the current Chair of the Clothing Committee of the International Federation of Fairgrounds, has expressed to us her intention to hold the annual meeting at the China Silk Museum in Hangzhou.
Fourth, the influence of fashion for the society
In October 2016, the International Museum High-level Forum opened in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, and President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter and pointed out that museums are an important temple for the protection and inheritance of human civilization, a bridge connecting the past, the present and the future, and play a special role in promoting exchanges and mutual learning among world civilizations. This is General Secretary Xi Jinping's positioning of the museum, then for the national silk, we want to become a complete system of textile and apparel thematic museum, which is certainly not only the ancient cultural relics of textile and clothing, but should include modern, modern and contemporary, to connect the past, present and future, for the textile and apparel industry to do a good job. Therefore, According to this positioning, Guosi also established a new council and revised the charter, determining the collection, protection, research, display, inheritance and innovation of the textile and apparel cultural heritage with Chinese silk as the core.
From Pastoral to Urban: 400 Years of Western Fashion, China Silk Museum Fashion Museum
Before the opening of the new China Silk Museum in 2016, I had an interview with the media entitled "Pointing to fashion influence" to discuss the role of museums in the fashion industry. I think the China Silk Museum should be a fashion collector, a fashion hall and fashion enlightenment, as well as a place for aesthetic education for the public, that is, to let the audience understand what clothing is good, what clothing is bad, and finally the inheritance and innovation of clothing culture, so we put forward the concept of "fashion fan" and "fashion influence".
The vision of our museum is to build a fashionable museum, which is actually the request made to me by Gong Liang, the director of the Nanjing Museum, who commented on our plan and said that your museum should be made the most fashionable museum in China, of course, the most fashionable museum in China, not only the collection of fashion, but also the museum itself should be more fashionable. Therefore, there are also some activities in the museum that are more fashionable, such as walking on the lake and launching the "National Silk Night"; we provide a nightlife venue for Hangzhou, which is relatively fashionable in itself; there is also a more fashionable Jinkuo coffee, which introduces xiaofeng bookstore; designs a lot of fashion exhibits, using the pattern of our museum; we hold a number of "Silk Road Night" fashion activities in the evening, including "Arabian Night", "Persian Night", "French Night", "Italian Night" and so on. This is the concept of the museum's "fashion paradigm". Chen Shuihua, director of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, also said that the "fashion model" is actually to keep pace with the times, and every museum should have such a concept.
At that time, the "fashion fan" of the national silk also included its own topic that was related to fashion, so there should also be "fashion influence". Guosi should be a "fashion hall", the most sacred place to collect, protect, study and display fashion, and it is a teaching base. I think that all those who study clothing and textile design must come to The National Silk In their lifetime or study. In the clothing school curriculum, Western fashion is a compulsory course, while Chinese clothing is not, because the main theories and technologies of our current clothing design and engineering originate from the West, and then add their own cultural elements in different places. At present, there is no museum in China that can provide such a collection for students to learn, but the national silk can. Therefore, we have also designed a lot of teaching activities in terms of inheritance, and created the Female Red Transmission And Learning Hall, the highest level of which is the Female Red Workshop, which is a course mainly participated by adult designers, and the content of learning can be applied to their designs. Through these learnings, designers are provided with information, craftsmanship and design elements that create a "fashion impact".
Of course, "fashion influence" is more important to influence the majority of consumers. Our fashion exhibitions, fashion classrooms, fashion activities, and ultimately to empower a better life and empower the quality of the city, must truly integrate into the entire fashion circle. As China's top fashion museum, our positioning in the fashion circle is the collector of classic fashion works, the researcher of fashion history, and the display place of fashion culture, so as to provide basic education, design materials and inspiration for fashion designers and manufacturers, provide cultural knowledge and enhance aesthetic taste for fashion consumers, and finally achieve the goal of advocating a fashion lifestyle and empowering people to live a better life. This is the positioning and role of a fashion thematic museum in the fashion circle.
Source: China Silk Museum