Hubei flair
Wuhan Fashion Week showcases the province’s ancient culture
They sang with gusto. “Oh! My friend! With its heroic spirit, the Yangtze River appears on the field of Asia. It shows the spirit of our nation — great and strong!
Here, facing to the Yangtze River, we sing our anthem.
I stand at the top of the mountain, looking at the Yangtze, running to the southeast.” Thus, the choral song Ode to the Yangtze River opened the River Town show at Wuhan Fashion Week’s opening ceremony on Sept 20.
Zhang Zhaoda, who has won the China Fashion Award’s top Chinese designer prize twice, paid homage to Hubei province instead with a special collection of over 100 pieces of clothing.
Zhang explored several cities in the province, and studied the history and culture of the area, historically known as Chu, a regional state of the Zhou Period (c. 11th cent-221 BC), to develop the line.
His designs featured symbols and folk arts, including Chu and Han embroidery, Western Rancap brocade and patterns borrowed from bronze ware produced in the area in ancient times.
“I want to inject the culture and my feeling for Wuhan into my designs,” Zhang says. The show started with catwalk shows of skirts and dresses in such ice-cream colors as light green, sky blue and lilac.
A belt Zhang created featured the Western Rancap brocade, in which bronze colors are painted on starched material, depicting the mythical creatures taotie and kui that are believed to protect and bless humans. “Ethnic Tujia women in Hubei’s Enshi traditionally produced (the brocades) on looms in preparation for marriage,” Zhang explains.
Models posed for group photos after their session, rather than at the end, as is customary.
Every model wore at least four shades of blue in the next series, which featured Zhang’s denim designs. It presented dresses and jackets created from parts of pants, made recognizable by the repurposed jeans’ pockets. Their cuffs, shoulders, backs and hems were also adorned with bronze patterns. The buzi fabric that was popular in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties was a mainstay of Zhang’s denim pieces. The embroidery style’s motifs include animals — cranes, golden pheasants and peacocks — that represented ancient officials’ ranks. He believes the fusion of buzi, which recalls feudal history, and jeans, which represent free-spirited modernity, create a cultural connection with Hubei. The last session’s models appeared onstage in contemporary Chinesestyle dresses loaded with chiffon, satin and beads.
The dark navy, black, green, red and white clothing appeared to be tie-dyed. But closer examination revealed the patterns were instead rendered using brush strokes. White paint appeared as drops, scribbles and tiny words on every possible corner of the clothes, including the hems, fronts and sleeves. Green, blue and black were used to portray wild grass swaying. Satin patches sewed on the clothes featured the classic dragon-and-phoenix motif, traditionally used to portray the emperor and empress and often seen in costume dramas. The final series also featured fabrics like lace folded and overlapped to create puffy effects. Belts migrated from waists to necks, becoming more decorative than functional. Billowing red, blue and green skirts, and jumping and swaying denim, added to the dramatic effect as the models presented the pieces onstage.
The show concluded with a performance of The Dragon Boat Tune, a Tujia folk song about a woman who wanted to cross the river during Spring Festival and the ferryman who took her to the far bank.
It was a final homage to the spirit of Hubei that took center stage at the fashion week’s start.