Promotion of Rites in a Beautiful World -- 2015 NE•TIGER “Ming Li” Haute Couture Huafu Fashion Show

The 17th China Fashion Week made its grand debut in Beijing on October 25. As a big opening show, NE•TIGER “Ming Li” Haute Couture Huafu Fashion Show was performed in a great way in Beijing Hotel. While lighting the flame of Chinese clothing culture with Huafu (Chinese national dress), NE•TIGER, as a top fashion brand in China, invites the people around the world to share the common memory and language of Chinese people in a fantastic world by crossing the barrier of time and space.

Promotion of Rites around the World in the Prosperous Era of Yongle Emperor 

More than 5,000 years ago, “Huang Di, Yao, and Shun wore their upper and lower garments as patterns to the people, and good order was secured all under heaven. The idea of all this was taken, probably, from Qian and Kun.” Following the Zhou, Han and Tang Dynasties, the Ming Dynasty, one of the most brilliant dynasties in the 5000-year Chinese history, is another great era famed for the ritual civilization. As stated by the History of Ming, Zheng He’s voyage team had a guard of honor, who wore splendid clothes and many of whom were musicians. During the voyage, the prosperous clothing culture contributed a lot to spreading the thought of Confucianism, which focuses on harmony, around the world. Now, NE•TIGER “Ming Li” Huafu series incorporates the cultural essence of the Ming Dynasty, and again, attracts the world's attention to China, a country with a long history of civilization.

The Ritual and Music Civilization Built in a Country Famed for Its Clothing Culture

Other than the visual impact, what NE•TIGER offers to the world of fashion is the memory of culture in mind. At the very beginning, the etiquette is about how to wear clothes. On the brilliant night, the sublime statue of Xuanyuan Huangdi, the ancestor of Chinese people, stood tall in the Banquet Hall of Beijing Hotel. From his deep eyes, it looked as if he was watching the inheritance of Chinese civilization across the history. Correspondingly, more than a thousand yellow bricks, which were made of burned soil taken from Huangdi County, Shaanxi Province, were laid on the ground, meaning all of Chinese civilization is based on the yellow soil on the ground and also representing the efforts NE•TIGER has made in its 33-year history to inherit, and make innovations in, traditional Chinese clothing culture.  

While inheriting the traditional Chinese dress with a thousand-year history, NE•TIGER has made numerous fashionable and innovative breakthroughs. Now, by working together with a global top stage art team, NE•TIGER has made a great effort to offer an epic banquet in terms of visual and acoustical senses. On the stage, as the booming sound of violoncellos was integrated with the modern electronic music in a creative way, the royal music was played by Shakuhachi, Guqin, chime bells, bronze drums and other instruments in a harmonious manner, just like a melody across the history that shows the grandness of Chinese music civilization. During the musical performance, the curtain of the memory for the Ming Dynasty was slowly rolled up. With a heart of freedom during a thousand-year period, NE•TIGER, as usual, plays in a fantastic dreamland between tradition and fashion. In terms of design, the “Ming Li” series takes into account the global popular trend that focuses on thickness and magnificence while taking the Ming Dynasty’s clothing feature of “inheritance from the Zhou and Han Dynasties, and abstraction from the Tang and Song Dynasties”. With natural silk as its carrier, NE•TIGER’s Huafu shows the Chinese-style beauty of dignity and luxury based on the five national colors, i.e., black, red, blue, green and yellow. In terms of crafts, the ancient Kesi and brocade represent the legend and brilliance; the gold embroidery reminds you of the times of silk and gold; and the four great embroideries inherit the essence of Eastern aesthetics and create colorful texture for fabrics, thus extending Chinese ancient techniques and deep glory. While showing respect to the classics, NE•TIGER makes use of the Western technique of three-dimensional tailoring to show the graceful form of women. Meanwhile, the brand breaks the boundary of design with the asymmetric style and mantle style, enabling Huafu to match the body curve to a higher degree. With the beautiful Huafu flowing around, the show is just like a floating, grand night banquet in an imperial palace.

The memory of coronets and robes will live for a hundred generations. In this fashion show, NE•TIGER used Chinese wedding dress series to show the wedding rites in the 5,000-year Chinese civilization and to reproduce the wedding-dress culture that approached perfection in the Ming Dynasty. Showing the tradition of Chinese wedding and the beauty of the world in every needle and every piece of thread, and reflecting the depth and brilliance of Chinese and Western civilizations in ancient and present times in every dress, NE•TIGER turns on a new page for the goal of “beautiful China shinning in the world”.

Illustration of Bright Virtue in a State of Ceremonies

NE•TIGER “Ming Li” Haute Couture Fashion Show reproduces the prosperous era of Chinese ritual and music civilization. Zhang Zhifeng, founder and art director of NE•TIGER, explained his idea in an interview. He said, “The way of great learning consists in manifesting one's bright virtue. A piece of Huafu is full of hopes and possibilities because it has a solid and robust root, i.e., the rites in Chinese civilization. In the Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago, Zhang Qian visited the Western Regions as Chinese imperial envoy and established the well-known Silk Road on Land, which connected the glory and civilization of Asian and European continents and built an immortal legend. In the Ming Dynasty over 600 years ago, Zheng He commanded seven expeditions to the Western Ocean and established the Maritime Silk Road, which enabled the mutual communication and promotion between Chinese culture and other cultures in the world. The ‘Ming’ in ‘Ming Li’ represents both the Ming Dynasty and the illustrious virtue of Chinese people that we should uphold. As a defender and inheritor of Chinese civilization, NE•TIGER would like to, based on its dress products, promote Chinese people’s spirits, i.e., open mind, tolerance, good faith and kindness, around the world!” 

Since its foundation in 1982, NE•TIGER has started the era of Chinese evening dress with superb determination; launched the revolution in Chinese wedding dress; and created Huafu, the Chinese national dress that represents the spirits of Chinese people. Now, NE•TIGER “Ming Li” Haute Couture Fashion Show, based on a great effort, aims to uphold the hope of revival and revitalization of Chinese ritual and music civilization with its dress across the boundary of time and space and to build another significant milestone in the brand’s history!