This year is the 25th anniversary of the founding of China International Fashion Week. In the past 25 years, China International Fashion Week has been a witness and leader in the development of Chinese fashion. As an important platform to promote the development of original power, China International Fashion Week has attracted a large influx of young design power.
From September 4 to 12, the Spring/Summer 2023 China International Fashion Week was held at 751D-PARK in Beijing. Our reporter interviewed four representative young designers, who showed the Chinese design with power in their eyes from the perspective of hometown culture, national craftsmanship, modern art and future technology.
The impression of hometown
"To present this release, we prepared day and night for 219 days. We insisted on doing some experimental attempts, many innovative processes that no one has ever even done before. During this process, we had confusion and we were worried whether these efforts, persistence and innovation would be recognized and resonate with everyone." Huang Guangchen, founder of independent designer brand Youth Today, said.
"My partner and I were both born in a heavy industrial city in the north. There used to be the backbone of new China. Our grandparents and fathers contributed their whole lives to industrial construction, and there was a kind of tenacity, persistence and perseverance in them. In order to express this spirit, we combined the industrial style design with the brand's own post punk (post punk) art concept in this design to present a unique post punk industrial wave." Huang Guangchen said.
The theme of this season is "Under the Cold Wall", which restores the glorious industrial era to the show. The main tone was black, with many layers of industrial colors, such as the rusty red of steel decay, the cracked and oily black of asphalt, and the layered metallic steel colors and industrial beige. In terms of design, the once honed cotton shoulder pads on the shoulders of workers are designed as metal shoulder pads, the protective plates are condensed into steel plates to be attached to the chest, the armbands are designed as metal pockets, and the hero's badge is transformed into a metal striped badge ......
Another hand asphalt paste will be used to reshape the denim, as well as through the shamrock soaking and tanning process to create rust jackets. "The process was tedious and took 15 days to complete. We first need to stir into a paste of river mud, thinly applied to the denim jeans soaked by several times of scoria water, so that the tannins in buttercup and river mud in the chemical reaction of iron ions. Then, the jeans will be dyed black and brown, and then softened by washing and drying. Finally, the denim is reshaped with an ancient Chinese coating process." Huang Guangchen said.
"What bothered me most during the design process was how to get our ideas off the ground. When we went to the factories, the bosses thought our ideas were impractical, and even many of the processes they had never done before. We had returned to the wash factory countless times to reach a process, but many of the ideas, it is still difficult to achieve, and even hit a wall everywhere." Huang Guangchen said, "After that, we went to buy the paint ourselves and finish the whole process by ourselves. So much so that the day before the show, I was still perfecting the alcohol wiping of the last faded leather jacket. I didn't wear gloves the whole time in order to make the mechanism of the whole dress appear naturally, and was very sad to harvest a pair of little black hands that I couldn't wash for a week."
In the design, Huang Guangchen linked the discarded easy-open rings with metal rings in a purely handmade way to make a whole metal piece as an embellishment for the garment. "This not only solves the problem of environmental protection, such handicraft labor also solves the life of many laid-off aunts, which is a very meaningful thing." Huang Guangchen said. At the same time, he also collected a lot of old books and magazines from the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the Youth Daily, and cut out the wonderful passages and put them into the clothing "tags". Huang Guangchen believes that these books piled up in the warehouse lost its original value, but pass them out in the form of hangtags, will let more people read the stories, feel the warmth and a magical experience.
As a Chinese original designer, "I used to think that using a new approach to present the national style better is awesome Chinese design. But as I continue to perceive and grow, I now believe that we must first distinguish 'Chinese design' from 'national style design'." Huang Guangchen said, "They are not concepts that stay on the surface, but how we can tell our growth, our life, the Chinese spirit we want to celebrate, in the language of clothing. For example, our theme this time brings the iron will of our fathers, which is also a Chinese spirit."
Shepherd and poetry
"I was born in a small town in northwest Shaanxi and grew up on the yellow land, probably infected by the strong ancient atmosphere and folk art culture of the northwest, and have a deep love for folk ethnic culture in my bones. China has thousands of years of history and culture far and deep, we can extract and create too many things, any piece of history, a cultural ritual, a cultural relic, a historical and cultural story, including any ethnic group, there are infinite creative inspiration." Han Qi, founder of PASTORAL POETRY brand, said.
"We have been feeling and exploring the Tibetan culture. We want to integrate the unique elegance and heavy cultural and artistic flavor of Tibetan culture into the design, and then combine innovation through Chinese traditional and modern craftsmanship to show a plain and unisex wearing state." Han Qi said.
PASTORAL POETRY Spring/Summer 2023 collection is based on the theme of "poetry of the shepherd", and the classical ethnic flavor of jacquard is the main element of this season's collection. The collection extracts and re-creates the jacquard pattern with classical ethnic characteristics, and gives full play to the different characteristics of the fabric through the process of weaving, interweaving and patchwork fur trim. Combined with unique headdress and hat ornaments and belt pendant with classical and folk style, the whole series is fashionable and not lack of ethnic elements, with a different oriental ethnic flavor.
"We did put a lot of thought into the jacquard elements. It is a process of appearing difficulties and solving them. For example, in the process of combining traditional ethnic crease threading and modern woven jacquard, the innovative process of fabric needs to be realized through different sequences, different machines and hands, different materials and yarn compositions, and repeatedly debugged color matching. And all these are the difficult points of fabric creation. Although it is difficult, it is also full of fun." Han Qi said.
"I think the only work that can become a valuable and meaningful design is the one that has been repeatedly pushed. Those ethnic crafts and ethnic cultures that are not recognized are largely because the designers lack thinking and just transfer the ethnic elements in a raw way." Han Qi said, "Good design is that we need to use modern aesthetics and trends to match colors, deconstruct and reorganize, use modern artistic cultivation to integrate traditional, ethnic and current life concepts with each other, think about the relevance of art and culture to modern thinking, think about the relationship and inner connection between ethnic culture and clothing, and think about the similarities and differences between ethnic elements and contemporary aesthetics. "
"The only innovation that is truly valuable and meaningful is the one that can trigger the design of the times. "Take a national pattern or a national structure, the environment and life philosophy of different generations bring us different preferences, so we have to think about how to match the color, how to deconstruct and change it, how to match and integrate with different materials, how to match the flat and three-dimensional dress silhouette, how to combine traditional craftsmanship and modern trends or even with technology, how to how to combine traditional craftsmanship with modern trends and even with technology, how to integrate with current habits and lifestyles, etc." Han Qi said.
Looking for Sunflowers
The theme of ADOLES Spring/Summer 2023 is "Sunflower", inspired by Van Gogh's series of paintings with sunflowers as the main content. "When we look back at the history of fashion, there are many great designers who have interpreted Van Gogh's sunflowers. I learn from his bravery and I have no hesitation in choosing to use him as the theme. In the creation, my team and I always maintain a true and devout creative mindset, based on the times and the creation of the self, so we see more of the power of life he conveyed, passionately blooming, forgetting to burn, is this not a reflection of our young generation?" ADOLES founder Yang Haibo said.
This is the first live show for the audience in the first year of ADOLES' development. The design team boldly tried to use the brand's past styles and leftover fabrics, using fabric recycling and deconstructed patchwork design techniques to give the leftover fabrics and out-of-season styles a new fashion and wearable attribute, and the use of recycled nylon and environmentally friendly fibers to interpret more possibilities of sustainable fashion. The colors are mainly "positive and healing" street sports colors, such as honeycomb yellow, satin sky blue and palm tree green, which add natural vitality to the design. The sunflower design, which is in full bloom, is a recurring signature element of ADOLES. These include embroidered logos, digital prints, and fleece crocheted sunflowers ...... "The artistic tone is the constant keynote of our brand positioning. This is closely related to our team, the initial team of ADOLES all graduated from art colleges and share a common learning background. When our team is on vacation, we will often go to see exhibitions, and if we need to cross cities, we will also buy air tickets just to see a big exhibition, which sounds strange, but this is the charm of art, the heart and soul, it is worth a visit." Yang Haibo said.
Printed deconstructed shirt shapes became the most frequently seen pieces this season, including a combination of irregular wave curves clashing patterns and hem cuts, three-dimensional pockets with elaborate details, tension-filled silhouette straw hats, and a stylized design of embellished crocheted flannel sunflowers.
"Our crocheted flannel flower this season is actually a Haifa non-traditional skill. For the fusion of Chinese characteristic culture and craft and design, our team always follows the 'internal communication' and explores the expression in aesthetic spirit and aesthetic mood, rather than doing the piling up of Chinese traditional elements. The characteristics of Chinese culture are profound and long-standing, which is a treasure trove for designers, and we have already benefited from taking one scoop of it. Next season, we will integrate more Chinese characteristics of culture and craftsmanship into the design to make the tradition new fashion." Yang Haibo said.
A sense of future technology
UNIX_T Spring/Summer 2023 collection is themed "Above the Dust" and is full of technology. "Our design team always looks at the future, and we hope to use this sense of existence with blurred boundaries with reality to provoke people to think about the future, and then present aesthetic trends that are ahead of the past and the present. We have always pursued a design style that transcends boundaries, is unconventional and bold. I'm actually scared a lot of the time, but I've never been confused because I understand that I'll get there eventually." said Yang Yu, founder of UNIX_T.
The entire collection is dominated by black, white, gray and earthy colors, deconstructing the clothes with uniform colors. "I wanted to weaken the negative impression of 'anti-utopia' in the cyberpunk style and emphasize a rundown yet high-tech atmosphere. And then through the mix of special fabrics and special texture accessories. Make a more daring attempt to make fashion more than just fashion." Yang Yu said.
This season, the brand continues to use the brand's recognizable streamlined silhouette, complemented by different fabrics and materials for stitching, while in different pieces, you can also see the deconstruction, high street and gothic and other different aesthetic styles and the fusion of "waste land", while highlighting the characteristics of the brand, but also make the whole brand more diversified, a sense of rigidity and flexibility. . "But we are very soft in the whole detailing, hoping to present a seemingly opposing but echoing styling effect." Yang Yu said.
From "Illusion" in the Spring/Summer 2022 collection to "Reverse Future - U World" in the Fall/Winter 2022 collection to "Above the Dust" in the Spring/Summer 2023 collection. UNIX_T explores new trends in apparel through different design languages, showing the unique independent aesthetics of contemporary women.
Article Source:艺术与设计
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