Gim JinYi, a South Korean international student, and Nguyen Thuy Linh, a Vietnamese international student, frequently visited museums after coming to pursue their studies in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province. As they gradually delved deeper into China’s history and culture, they developed a profound interest in the restoration of ancient Chinese clothing. Upon learning that Zhou Hongrui, a teacher from the Institute of Textile and Fashion Design at Luxun Academy of Fine Arts, was conducting research on the restoration of attire from the Warring States Period (475-221 BCE), the two international students applied to join her research team.
Zhou Hongrui is an expert in ancient clothing. She once led her students to visit the Jingzhou Museum in Hubei Province to observe unearthed clothing relics. Among them, a phoenix-patterned embroidered silk garment, a precious cultural relic from the Warring States Period, caught her attention. This was a piece of noblewomen’s clothing made of reddish-brown silk, with the main motif featuring a phoenix pecking at a snake. The entire garment boasted a smooth and glossy silk surface with evenly woven threads, reflecting the advanced silk reeling technology of that time. Upon returning, she led her students in restoring this ancient garment.
Restoring a piece of ancient Chinese clothing involves a dozen meticulous steps, including drafting the structural design, sourcing fabrics and accessories, dyeing, air drying, ironing, cutting, embroidering, and sewing. The whole process takes nearly 40 days to complete.
In class, Zhou Hongrui selected a roll of fabric with the color and texture similar to that of the phoenix-patterned embroidered silk garment from the Warring States Period, and guided Gim JinYi and Nguyen Thuy Linh in meticulously cutting the fabric according to the original design. The two international students cut the fabric based on the dimensions of the ancient garment, making slits on the left and right sides of the upper part of the fabric. Along the cut lines, they folded the upper part to form the sleeves and the lower part to create the double lapels. Then, they applied the lock stitch embroidery technique in accordance with the ancient garment’s embroidery craftsmanship and finally sewed the fabric pieces together. “Ancient Chinese people made the utmost use of clothing materials. This garment was crafted from a single piece of silk fabric in a ‘one-piece’ T-shaped structure, achieving zero waste of the material,” Gim JinYi praised as she worked on the restoration.
“The design style of this phoenix-patterned embroidered silk garment from the Warring States Period is simple, elegant, and understated. This reflects the ancient Chinese people’s aesthetic taste for simplicity and grace, as well as their spirit of frugality and inclusiveness,” said Nguyen Thuy Linh.
