FRANCE—The couture design of “Twinkling” by Wang Zhaoqing, 31, won the gold prize in the Formal/Business Attire in the First Global Han Couture Design Competition sponsored by New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV).
Wang is a fashion designer living in Paris, a city of chic fashion. She studied artistic modeling in Esba Marseille in France after graduation from the Department of Fashion Design at the China Academy of Art.
“My inspiration comes from nature,” Wang said.
She said she always walks outside to enjoy the scenery, feel the changes in nature and ponder the mysteries of nature.
Her Han couture work, “Twinkling” was inspired by an instantaneous reaction to nature, she said.
Her inspiration for the design came one day while she was out walking. She said some blue and purple flowers growing along roads through scenic fields were in harmony with the gray rocks on the ground. This prompted her to choose cloth with blue and purple flowers and gray fabrics, showing fine effects of light and shade.
The fabric selection for clothing design, depending upon the kind of fabric used (heavy or light, strong or soft, bright or dark), will have a color motif in its entirety, featured by changeable tints. In her design work, she made the arrangement of light and dark elements—applying dark blue-purple color in the large upper part, and soft and light grey silk in its lower part.
Wang said she prefers to use all-natural fibers in her clothing, including silk and cotton. She said it is more comfortable to wear. Using natural materials and colors means the work presents a feeling of global harmony, with lovely tone and rich color, she said. People wearing such colours will look like more generous and elegant.
Wang began to design Han clothes after she studied abroad. In China she studied Western-style clothing design with a similar theory to sculpture, emphasizing on stereo structural body. She said she thinks China’s Han couture was very precise with intricate detail and designs to show the aesthetic ideas. The simple processes behind the Han costumes include carefully folding a piece of cloth and then cutting out the sleeves and waist directly. Its purpose is not to present the body but to contain inferred understandings. Loose Han clothes give people a feeling of comfort and ethereal beauty.
To keep her mind clean when she was designing the Han couture, she said to herself, “You should calm down as you are designing the Han couture. Only with a sincere heart can you make a pure article.” Wang said that with a pure mind an artist can create an art work that will really touch people’s hearts.
