Ancient Chinese crafts shine at SS2027 Beijing Fashion Week

SS2027 Beijing Fashion Week, themed New Chapter, Boundless Coexistence, started this week. Putting intangible cultural heritage front and center, this season brings ancient crafts once preserved in museums onto the runways and reimagines oriental aesthetics through fashion.

The opening gala was held in the Golden Hall of Beijing Hotel on Monday. A Yunjin wooden loom sat on the runway, as haute couture designer Laurence Xu presented his collection Qi. Co-created with the Nanjing Yunjin Brocade Museum, the collection draws inspiration from ancient bronze motifs. The pieces are hand-woven from zhuanghua satin, real gold thread and silk, with the designer's original "Liulu Embroidery" creating embossed metallic textures. Under stage lighting, bronze motifs blend seamlessly with the Yunjin brocade, capturing the spirit of Chinese civilization on fabric. The show closed with Chinese singer Gong Linna leading the audience in the song River Sound into Old Years (Jiang Sheng Ru Jiu Nian).

Before the official opening, designer Guo Pei presented her haute couture preview at Juyongguan Great Wall. Twenty-seven handcrafted Chinese wedding dresses were paraded blending delicate oriental embroidery with high fashion, bringing Chinese romance to the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Running till Sept 17, SS2027 Beijing Fashion Week is hosting events across six districts, with its main venue on Wangfujing Pedestrian Street. More than 160 brands from home and abroad are staging over 80 presentations. Designers including Zhu Bingren, Hu Sheguang and Zhang Zhaoda will showcase their works, with Li Ning's collection closing the Week.

Intangible heritage runs through the whole program. The WEEK UP Contemporary Brocade Design & Fashion Innovation Exhibition features fresh designs of Shu brocade, Yunjin and Song brocade, lending modern aesthetics to ancient fabrics. The inaugural Beijing CBD Fashion Forum will discuss how traditional crafts can reach global audiences and enable cross-cultural fashion dialogue. SS2027 Beijing Fashion Week also encourages emerging designers to draw inspiration from heritage crafts.

The citywide fashion event highlights ancient crafts are no longer static museum exhibits. From the Great Wall to indoor runways, heritage techniques such as brocade, bronze melting and embroidery are reshaped into contemporary clothing that interprets age-old cultural heritage in a vivid and accessible way.

Li Yiqian contributed to this story.