Dunhuang flying fairy, dress floating. In the midst of the clouds, overlooking all life.
Tang style girl, with willow eyebrows, and light smile.
Western region girl, holding blade, eyes revealing a murderous aura.
@Cai Cai, with her stunning Chinese style dress photos, has gained countless popularity among netizens. And Chinese style costume is getting more and more focus, #chinese street fashion, become the newest trending topic. JOY from Pu Xiang Design will introduce you to three ladies who are not only super fans of Chinese style dress, but also dedicated to promoting and spreading this culture.
Cai Cai
Cai Cai, graduated from Tsinghua University. Out of hobby, began to costume play kinds of game characters, and easily manage different styles.
Cai Cai's Dunhuang photo series has received a lot of praise, and the Dunhuang Municipal Party Committee's Publicity Department awarded her as the “Dunhuang Promotion Ambassador” in 2020.
This group of “Tang women playing musical instruments” is based on the musical and dance paintings in the Mogao Caves.
The Mogao Caves are the pinnacle of ancient Chinese music and dance, and the images recorded there are rich beyond imagination.
In the painting, the women are either carrying ancient Konghou, or holding drums, or playing Paixiao. The swaying images give the viewer a glimpse of how flourishing music and dance were in ancient China.
“Jiu Se Lu Jing Tu (九色鹿经图)”, a classic painting on the Dunhuang Caves, is interpreted by Cai Cai as if the nine colored deer were fairies that fell into the earthly world. A closer look, from the costumes, to the makeup, even the hair strands are exquisite.
There are also countless patterns on the Dunhuang frescoes, all vividly interpreted by Cai Cai.
When it comes to creativity, Cai Cai never sets limits for herself, she actively delves into more types of culture. Even museum artifacts can be her creative inspiration.
The road of creation is not always smooth, and Cai Cai has been thinking about how to combine the shape with traditional culture? How to make a character without a prototype take shape? How to choose the material, process, shape, makeup and hairstyle of the clothes?
But she is always the same. “If we are fireflies, then traditional culture is the sun and the moon. The sun and the moon reflect the fireflies, and the fireflies can converge into a brilliant fire, illuminating the beauty of traditional style and the passage of modernity.”
Duo Duo Hua Lin
The power of one person may be thin, but the addition of more people makes the modern Chinese style more and more colorful. @Duo Duo Hua Lin, is also one of the lovers of traditional costume. She has restored the look of the goblins in the classic TV series Journey to the West.
The different looks and shapes of the goblins were all perfectly displayed by Duo Duo Hua Lin. In order to get closer to the old picture quality of the 80s, she specially came from a yard sale to find an old camera used by the TV station more than ten years ago. At the same time, in order to 1:1 replicate the look of the show, the goblins costumes are handmade by herself.
Subsequently, Duo Duo Hua Lin began to study the “Dream of the Red Chamber (1987 version)”.
Reproduction of these classic works, for Doduo Hua Lin, is not just to show costumes and makeup. Each reproduction is a dialogue between her and the classics across time and space. Therefore, she adds more of her own understanding to the reproduction, so that the characters do not just remain superficially similar.
The most popular work of Duo Hua Lin is the interpretation of “the real beauty of Chinese women” over the past 100 years. Through changes in dress, makeup, hairstyle, appearance and posture, the social changes in Chinese women over the last hundred years are condensed.
There is more than one issue of the such historical evolution of women's changes. In order to popularize the evolution of women's clothing in the Tang Dynasty, Duo Duo Hua Lin has produced a video entitled “How did women dress in the Tang Dynasty?” The video is about the evolution of women's clothing in the Tang Dynasty. With the turbulence of the times, women's clothing and makeup have changed dramatically.
The video is accompanied by textual explanations, so that more traditional culture beginners can quickly understand the history. As a member of the Chinese style dress enthusiasts, Duo Duo Hua Lin deserves admiration for her willingness to spend months, even years, to persist in one thing.
Liu Weixiu
The 78-year-old Liu Weixiu is affectionately known as “Hanfu Granny” by netizens. A video of her strolling around the streets of Changsha in hanfu made her popular overnight.
The elegant temperament is attributed to her experience in Peking Opera performance when she was young. When she was 13 years old, at the recommendation of her neighbors, Liu Weixiu entered the Peking Opera profession. Although she suffered a lot, Peking Opera also cultivated her temperament.
After retiring, she initially just acted as an accompaniment to young Hanfu performers during short video shoots. Surprisingly, she received a lot of compliments from netizens.
“Since then, I've fallen in love with hanfu, and although the Peking Opera costumes are stunningly beautiful, but it can't be taken off stage, and the hanfu make up for that.”
Granny enjoys the busy life of traveling in different hanfu shows and shooting short videos. “If adults are grown-up children, older people are mature children and should not be forgotten outside the hanfu circle.”
Although the title lists these three ladies as the most popular promoters of Chinese style dress, however, in my mind, anyone who is involved in traditional cultural promotion is worthy of praise. Will there be more people joining in this work in the future? I think so, for sure.