Independent Designer Jiang Xi: Feel The Culture And Spirit Behind Clothing.

Recently, APEC fashion designer Jiang Xi and his personal independent brand "Xi Shang" held a preview of the 2015 autumn winter series in the 798 Art District of Beijing.

As China's first independent accessory designer brand, "Xi Shang" has always respected contemporary Oriental Aesthetics and insisted on using the ancient Chinese slow embroidery craft. This time, we chose static way to release new products. We hope to leave you more time and space to feel the strong arts and crafts behind the works, which is a tribute and appeal to Chinese handmade spirit.

Inspired by Oriental Art Aesthetics

Using works to express understanding of culture

2015 the autumn and winter series new product preview is Jiang Xi's first independent Showroom. The inspiration of his work "porcelain theory" stems from the thinking and understanding of Oriental Art.

In the year of the sheep, the five elements belong to the soil, and the designer Jiang Xi is inspired by the "soil".

The "porcelain" of the earth, porcelain, water and soil, the sublimation of the earth and fire, the shape, the color, the enamel, and the patterns of the East reflect the essence of oriental aesthetics. Therefore, we take the shape of the "plum bottle" and "jade pot spring" in the peak period of the Song Dynasty. The glaze of "red", "azure", "blue blue" and "French jade" and so on in the Ming and Qing Dynasties' monochrome glaze, and the goldfish with a leisurely ease, are inspired by the illusion artist Escher in Holland, and create the world of porcelain and goldfish in the two dimensional space.

In addition, it has created a unique leather embroidery method combining Shu embroidery and Miao embroidery, trying to explore new possibilities in leather and needlework by using the hand of Sichuan and Guizhou embroidered mother of ancient handicrafts.

Embroidery makes the graphic design vivid and three-dimensional, and the spatial arrangement of ceramics highlights the strong sense of deep world and modern modernity.

For this reason, Jiang Xi said, "traditional culture needs more practitioners. It is a way of culture to express understanding of culture with actions and works."

Bury the seeds of beauty from childhood

Open the door to the craft kingdom for her.

From the early germination of beautiful seeds to last year's APEC conference as designer behind the scenes, Jiang Xi has been diligently pursuing the source of national culture as inspiration, and has gone all along in the original oriental aesthetics accessories.

She came from a scholarly family. She grew up with her versatile grandfather and grew up with her ingenious grandmother. Her strong interest in handwriting also exerts a subtle influence on her.

Different from other people's choice of popular fashion design, Jiang Xi, a university student, chose a new course in accessories. The University's accessories science covers a wide range of shoes, bags, jewelry, metal crafts, materials from gold, silver, copper to cloisonne, embroidery, etc. these folk arts and crafts and traditional culture have impressed her deeply and opened her door to different crafts.

After graduation, she came to Italy, a dream of life, to study the luxury accessory design course.

In Milan, fashion news, she is deeply attracted by the charm of fashion.

If we learn the basic knowledge system in China, the teachers in Italy have taught her how to build a relatively complete system, from the perspective of brand, to think about the style and location of the brand.

This kind of subversive awareness has also created a good vision for her own brand in her mind.

"Cloud shoes" won the gold medal.

Love national brand

The 5 / 12 earthquake of 2008 caused Wenchuan to suffer heavy losses in the about 200000 Qiang Minority's children's settlement area, and the ancient Qiang culture was faced with the challenges of life and death.

Jiang Xi, who has always been concerned about the survival condition of the minority nationalities, is eager to change the state of being strapped by the embroidered mother and let more people pay attention to the handicraft of Qiang women.

She designs a "cloud shoe" with the elements of Qiang embroidery, and extracts unique lines from the ancient shape. It matches modern conical high heels. It uses Chinese elements of silk, embroidery, gorgeous colors and Western sexy publicity to mix and match. Embroidery in the works is all hand embroidered by Qiang women in Wenchuan. This work was awarded the gold medal in the 2012 CCCLA China shoe design Grand Prix.

With the opportunity coming, she was invited to be a special designer of the Jet Li Foundation's "Qiang embroidery assistance program". She used the crafts of Qiang Nationality's embroidered mother to produce products to feed them.

Before that, these embroidered mother crafts were more used in tourist souvenirs and were replicated in large numbers.

Jiang Xi believes that these embroidery techniques that are full of time and manual temperature should be integrated with better workmanship and better quality materials in order to reflect their deserved value.

Under her proposal, the help plan focuses on the design and development of a suite of high-end products.

The focus of the help program is Qiang embroidery, and Jiang Xi wants to have a broader view of Oriental Aesthetics and wider East.

"In addition to Qiang embroidery, and Su embroidery, Guang embroidery, Xiang embroidery, they are very exquisite and fine, and many national handicrafts are worth digging."

After a year of cooperation, Jiang Xi felt that the idea was ripe for the launch of his own independent designer brand in 2011.

Protecting traditional culture

Be a practitioner of process culture communication

With his strong interest in bags and accessories, Jiang Xi started his own brand with enthusiasm.

Because of too much attention to clothing design in the country, the accessories brand is still blank. Chiang hee is full of pride: "this piece of accessories has always been influenced by international brands, and many brands do not have their own style and soul."

Jiang Xi hopes that besides LV and Hemers, consumers can have other choices and hope to make the accessories brand that integrates Chinese original elements. "Our country has such rich history and culture and exquisite craftsmanship, but lacks the brand of national culture."

Jiang Xi did not hesitate to travel across mountains and rivers to get to know the excellent embroidered girls who still retain their traditional handicrafts.

In the Yao nationality, Jiang Xi was deeply shocked. "Culture is attached to people. Although the environment is hard and the walls are full of walls, embroidered girls have traditional virtues and have deep pursuit of beauty.

I am touched by their calloused hands and wrinkled skin. They are artists in our minds. "

The eight row Yao ethnic group in South China has a history of more than 1000 years since the Song Dynasty. They have their own language, but they do not have their own words. Most of them are recorded by Yao songs and Yao embroidery.

Therefore, Yao embroidery accumulates national culture, is full of mystery, and has more historical charm.

However, nowadays many young people have gone out of the Yao mountain. The original embroidery habit is slowly fading, and the old embroidered mother is getting fewer and fewer.

Jiang Xi hopes to use his many years of learning experience from both China and Western countries to help Chinese traditional culture and handicrafts continue and develop, and apply traditional Chinese culture and handicrafts to more high-end, innovative, more fashionable and more fashionable products.

In the traditional way of returning to life and finding fashion, it also lets embroidered girls get more job opportunities.

Carrying heavy culture

Future integration with contemporary art aesthetics

Jiang Xi believes that clothing is the projection of social development to a certain degree, and culture bears the thread of history. It is very thick, not every designer is willing to travel with culture.

Now the market is entertaining and fast fashion is popular. Many designers choose short dress design to cater for young people's visual stimulation.

She is willing to precipitate in impetuous society, using design techniques as a bridge, so that more people are interested in culture.

"Only culture and art can nourish the mind, rooted in culture, and things can get a long life."

All along, her design has drawn from the broad and profound Chinese traditional culture, creating her own attitude and shaping the cultural value of the brand.

To her relief, more and more people like this Oriental elegant atmosphere.

In the future, Jiang Xi hopes to integrate traditional culture with western contemporary aesthetics and contemporary art, and apply their essence and expression to traditional culture. In constant cultural collision and integration, the Chinese classical culture will be endowed with new vitality and create Oriental Aesthetics in the contemporary context.

She hoped that when we pursue western brands such as "Hermes" and Western aesthetics, can we also return to the exquisite handicrafts that we have handed down for thousands of years?

These handicrafts, no matter their history, refinement or culture, are not in the West. They should not just be sacrificed and grow old, but should be integrated into the times and bloom again.