China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Inspired by an ancient muse
The Mogao Caves — part of the ancient Silk Road — provide endless inspiration for designer Xiong Ying, helping her to take her fashion house, Heaven Gaia, to new levels on the international stage, Chen Nan reports.
Icons from the relics in Dunhuang — one of China’s biggest treasure troves of art, dating back a millennium — were taking on a new, chic look on the runway as Chinese fashion designer Xiong Ying presented her spring/summer collection for 2019 at the Hotel Salomon de Rothschild in Paris on Sept 28, 2018.
Elements from Dunhuang’s murals, including nine-colored deer, flying apsaras (angel-like beings known as feitian in Chinese) and ancient musicians playing the pipa, or Chinese lutes, all came alive through Xiong’s contemporary-design aesthetics in 78 sets of outfits and accessories.
Xiong’s collection was delicate, light and breezy. It featured such techniques as dip-dyeing, Suzhou embroidery, tapestry work and hand painting on textiles, such as silk and chiffon.
“It is a different approach, and I drew my inspiration from my trip to Dunhuang,” the Beijing-based designer says. “There are personal involvement and memories, and there are all these other layers intermingled, which make the idea of luxury even more interesting. The collection is not just about expensive materials and complicated techniques but also history and personal experience.”
Xiong launched her own fashion label, Heaven Gaia, in 2013 to present traditional Chinese culture to the world through fashion design. Traveling to Dunhuang had been a dream of hers ever since, Xiong says.
“I wanted to go on a journey and get out of my comfort zone. Although I had read many stories about Dunhuang and had seen lots of photos and videos about this mysterious place, I set aside all the preconceptions I had about Dunhuang before I set off,” recalls Xiong.
“I wanted to gain inspiration from what was happening at the moment, so I decided to embark on a road trip to take beautiful photographs. It’s important for me, as a designer, to dedicate time to creativity.”
Trip back in time along the Silk Road
Xiong made her first trip to Dunhuang in 2015. She set off alone from her home in Beijing and first arrived at Xi’an, Shaanxi province, the city that was the starting point of the ancient Silk Road. Dunhuang was also an important stop on the Silk Road network and is home to a collection of 735 grottoes at Mogao that span over a millennium. In 1987, the caves were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
During her 10-day journey, Xiong took photos, visited museums and drank in the gorgeous murals, which later served as her muse.
Two years later, she returned to Dunhuang with her design team in tow to begin preparations for her 2019 collection.
The collection received positive feedback on social media. Fans were wowed by Xiong’s talent for bringing the ancient murals alive and her dedication to showing Chinese culture to the world.
The 78 outfits and accessories were chosen from over 300 works that took Xiong and her team about a year to finish. She returned to Dunhuang again after the fashion show in Paris, “to pay respect to the holy site”.
She adds that her exploration of Dunhuang will never end, since the site provides her with infinite inspiration for imagination and creativity.
Xiao Qiang (pseudonym) is one of 50 designers working at Xiong’s fashion brand. In 2017, the 30-year-old traveled to Dunhuang with Xiong to seek inspiration.
His first impressions of Dunhuang were of the paintings of Zhang Daqian, an artist who traveled to the cave complex to study Buddhist murals in the 1940s.
“I was about 13 years old when I first saw his paintings in my school textbook. The murals conveyed the site’s power and history,” says Xiao Qiang, who joined Xiong’s company in 2012.
One of the most impressive paintings Xiao Qiang saw in Dunhuang was the mural, Deer King Jataka, in Cave 257, from the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534). It shows influences from India and Central Asia in terms of content and technique.
An image of Buddhist nirvana, which features an 18-meter-long reclining Buddha in Cave 158, inspired one of Xiao
Those great cultural elements speak for themselves. Through fashion design, which is a mutual language like music, international audiences can gain a better insight into China.” Xiong Ying, designer
Qiang’s designs, where he combined it with elements of traditional Chinese ink paintings. Skills passed down over generations
Xiong is a native of Changde, Hunan province, and says that her interest in the fashion industry started from an early age. When she was 4 years old, she watched her mother and grandmother sewing and making clothes together at home.
From flowers to butterflies, themes in their embroidery patterns kept changing and developing over time, which always surprised Xiong as a child.
Xiong learned embroidery and sketching skills from her mother and grandmother, and enjoyed designing and making clothes for her dolls.
“For me, it’s an accessible craft to start, and hand embroidery is both fun and relaxing,” says Xiong.
“I have never formally studied fashion design, but it was a skill that I picked up and mastered naturally.”
Before launching her fashion brand, Xiong also traveled to Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces to learn Suzhou embroidery, one of the oldest and most-famous embroidery techniques in China.
She still has a large wooden box stored in her home in Changde, in which her mother and grandmother put all their precious embroidered clothes and ornaments.
“Those clothes and ornaments were handed down from generation to generation in my family, and my mother used to air them in the sun once a year to prevent them from being destroyed by moths. It’s like a family tradition, which I find fascinating,” Xiong says.
She named her fashion brand Heaven Gaia after Gaia, the personification of the Earth and one of the earliest Greek deities, as a way to pay tribute to her mother and grandmother.
She also dedicates the brand to Chinese women, who she says are “full of love and wisdom”.
“Gaia is the ancestral mother of all life, and she represents the beauty of women. For me, Chinese women are beautiful and have unique fashion tastes,” says Xiong, who loves fashion styles from across the ages but especially the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Homage to traditional Chinese culture
By 2008, Xiong had made a name for herself as a fashion stylist and had a regular client base of artists, celebrities and TV hosts, including Chinese singer-songwriter Huo Zun.
“Her designs bring traditional Chinese culture to life through her contemporary aesthetic. I love the variety of elements in her works, such as the hanfu (traditional ethnic Han attire) and her use of gradually fading ink,” says Huo, who has been wearing Xiong’s designs for around two years.
In 2016, Xiong presented her 2017 spring/summer collection at Paris Fashion Week. The series, which featured a mix of ceramics and silk, was inspired by Yuanmingyuan, the royal summer resort in Beijing during the Qing Dynasty (16441911).
In 2017, Xiong staged a fashion show on the theme of inheritance at the Opera de Paris, presenting designs inspired by the stories of the “four famous ancient Chinese beauties” — Xi Shi, Diao Chan, Yang Yuhuan and Wang Zhaojun.
On Sept 30, she presented her latest summer/spring collection for 2020 in Paris on the theme of traditional Chinese opera. She based her ideas on Chinese opera pieces, including the Peking Opera, Farewell My Concubine, and the Kunqu Opera, The Peony Pavilion, which she watched as a child with her grandfather.
“Chinese culture provides me with endless inspiration for my designs. Chinese traditional arts and crafts — from making porcelain to ink painting and dyeing by hand — allow me to create new designs for a contemporary audience,” she says. “Those great cultural elements speak for themselves. Through fashion design, which is a mutual language like music, international audiences can gain a better insight into China.”