Frontline of Taobao Maker Festival 2020｜Creativity from a double-sided life revitalizes Chinese traditional clothing

Reported by Ivy Yu in Hangzhou, Edited and translated by Ang Li

How does it feel like to live a double-sided life as a rigorous code-writing programmer by day and an active fun-loving dancer at bars by night? The store owner of "Han-style clothing woven by Qiao", Wang Mengqiao, 27, was born into a family of tailors and her limited edition for this year's Taobao Maker Festival (TMF) is a must-have for people in first-tier cities. By disassembling, stretching and stitching together new styles of the same garment, she is able to recreate it into a new piece of art.

In 2006, Wang was first introduced to Chinese traditional clothing, Han-style clothes, and was deeply attracted by the cultural characteristics of the style. As Wang had already mastered sewing skills, she soon began to design, cut and sew her own Han-style clothes.

Like most of her peers, at that time, Wang was familiar with pop culture elements such as science fiction or rock and roll, and favored the fierce clash of colors and unexpected dramatic effects. She started from referring to the traditional creation of Han-style clothing and gradually evolved into much bolder attempts and more adventurous designing ideas.

She founded Qiao Weaving Studio after pursuing a master's degree in architecture at South China University of Technology. Leveraging Guangzhou's well-established clothing industry and her unique understanding of design, Wang launched a distinctive line of Han-style clothes, with bright contrasting colors and geometric patterns that were rare in the market at that time.

For this year's TMF, Wang tailored a type of Han-style clothes that one can wear to dance at bars. This was originally designed for herself to attend the Strawberry Music Festival. She hopes that by wearing this, one will be a well-educated fair lady during the day, but when night falls and the flashing lights along with dance music start to kick in, it will bring back the ardent youth’s passion, restlessness and letting go of everything, just like the double-sided life she has been living.