Chinese designer comes to play at SA Fashion Week

The South African Fashion Week is an extravagant event where designers from not only South Africa but around the world come to showcase their talents and what their respective country has to offer when it comes to fashion. 

One of Chu Yan's designs [Photo provided by TimesLIVE]

This year saw Chu Yan, an associate professor at the Beijing Institute of Fashion and Technology coming to showcase what China has to offer with the support of the Ministry of Culture in China and the embassy of China in South Africa. She was very pleased to be able to exchange ideas with South African fashion designers. She was also presented with an opportunity to understand more about the development of fashion in South Africa, and to introduce the tradition of Chinese clothing culture and its latest developments.

The show was titled “A Date With a Thousand Years”. It draws inspiration from the Tang Dynasty of China which existed over a thousand years ago. The series was based on the research results of Yan’s doctoral thesis. 

She told TimesLIVE that she hopes that through this exchange of culture, more people will understand Chinese clothing traditions and development and become even more aware of Chinese designers and Chinese brands.

One of Chu Yan's designs [Photo provided by TimesLIVE]

Chu Yan’s show was followed by a lecture in Johannesburg as part of fashion week. She presented her findings in a talk entitled ‘A Date with a Thousand Years – the Classic and Fashion of Chinese Clothing’. Her talk promoted the application and thorough spread thereof of Chinese traditional culture and arts in life as we know it. 

On the day of the fashion show, a Chinese South African award-winning jewelry designer, Angela Yeung of Impilo Collection, complemented Chu Yan’s collection to bring the South African touch to Yan’s garments. With a similar design aesthetic, Yeung said that she admires the Asian elements and reverence for Chinese culture that is Yan’s philosophy, and that she sees it come through in her work. This compliments Angela’s way of doing things because it is very similar to the way that she highlights her cultural history in every gem that that she makes. 

South African Fashion Week founder, Lucilla Booyzen says that this cultural exchanged provided a learning curve for many South African designers because as an event, they are very much obsessed with fashion and the business that can be created from fashion and that a cross-culture collaboration is not only a knowledge-transferal opportunity but also a publicity generator.