At every graduation, wedding, and funeral throughout Japan and Korea, people don their traditional ethnic costumes. Each garment is unique and colorful, with intricate detailing, and elegant in an understated way.
But Chinese national dress has been conspicuously absent at special occasions in China. Specifically, the costumes native to the Han ethnic group, which makes up the majority of Chinese, don’t have the place in Chinese society that the kimono and hanbok do in Japan and Korea.
Instead, what is worn at special occasions is the qipao, also called cheongsam. This dress is known for its high Mandarin collar and slits down either side. The qipao is the native dress of the Manchu people, who dominated China in the Qing Dynasty.
All over China, the Han people have taken another ethnicity’s dress as their traditional dress while their own national dress, the Hanfu, lies in the libraries and minds of a few traditional seamstresses. However, this is quickly changing as designers in China and abroad stage a quiet revolution a few closets at a time.
Chinese are regaining interest in their national outfit, the Hanfu, which is characterized by separate top and bottom garments, usually a wrap-around skirt. The lapels always overlap left over right, never the other way around, and only ties are used, never buttons or zippers. Seams are required down the center of the back, but not allowed over the shoulders and rarely across the width of the skirt.
With such particular rules, it’s no wonder that it’s hard to find an authentic Hanfu. Many of the specifications for producing the Hanfu style have been lost or obscured after years of Manchu rule and the communist takeover.
Since the beginning of communist rule, the Party demanded that everyone wear military uniforms, and outlawed traditional clothing styles, including the qipao. Values and customs passed down from antiquity were considered “feudal” and criticized. Thus the longstanding heritage of the Hanfu was all but lost to modernity.
Revival
Internet forums for Hanfu design have sprouted up in recent years, allowing designers to share ideas and resources. Without established institutions for the research and propagation of traditional designs to turn to, hobbyists, enthusiasts, and commercial clothes makers are gathering over the Web.
However, the renewed interest in the Hanfu has new problems of its own. With the commercialization of Hanfu style, some of the items sold might not be authentic. They are being passed off as only Hanfu-esque or Hanfu-inspired, and not adhering to the core beliefs that the Hanfu embodied for ancient Chinese.
Additionally, when money is involved, design techniques become trade secrets and are jealously guarded from other clothes makers, according to Fan Hong, a traditional Chinese clothing maker and designer from Flushing, N.Y. Designers get worried that unscrupulous people will copy and profit from their designs.
Fang is one of the participants in an international Hanfu design competition hosted by New Tang Dynasty Television. NTDTV’s goal it is to revive traditional Chinese culture and promote classical Western arts.
The third annual NTDTV Global Han Couture Design Competition challenges fashion designers to return to ancient roots for inspiration. It seeks the most historically authentic clothing designs originating from what many consider the peak of Chinese civilization: the Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties, which in total span close to 1,000 years.
These dynasties are the significant periods for the competition because the rulers were Han Chinese, and the idea behind the competition is the revival of Han ethnic dress.
The competition was on Saturday, Oct. 16, at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Manhattan. Three runway shows took place beginning at 1 p.m. An awards ceremony was held in the evening. Additional articles will follow giving photos of the event and the list of the winners.
The Epoch Times is a proud media sponsor of NTDTV’s global competition series.