DISCOVER THE WORLD OF ZHAO HUIZHOU, THE LADY OF FASHION AND CULTURE
Text by: Annarosa Laureti
Chinese fashion never stop astonishing us. Zhao Huizhou is one of the last fashion names coming from East you need to know. With a master degree at the Politecnico of Milano, the Chinese designer today skilfully mixes up together Western design and timeless Eastern elegance.
Founder of HUI brand, she has been able to carry out the profession of fashion designer alongside that of Chinese culture ambassador. The endless passion for art in fact urged her to undertake a path of promotion and protection of all those ancient artisanal traditions at risk. Fighting against an uncontrolled globalization, Zhao Huizhou tries to protect and export at the same time art and culture of her beloved country.
More than just a brand in fact, from 2016 HUI has become a truly foundation whose main goal is, as the designer herself stated, “to use art and design to develop projects for the public good that are focused on poverty reduction and, in particular, improving life for women and children”.
Thanks to several donations HUI foundation could give to life to the Centennial Fashion Museum retracing throughout several objects displayed – coming also from the personal collection of Miss Zhao Huizhou – the history of Chinese fashion culture, from the Qing dynasty to the modern era, passing through the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China of course.
Organizing cultural tours for students in the far villages of the outskirts of Guizhou, the designer contributes to the discover of small craftsmanship brands and ateliers, letting locals survive from fast fashion’s conquest.
However, as we can easily find in HUI Collection, the safety of ethnic minorities’ traditional techniques goes hand by hand with a refined modern taste which still winks to Western design and fashion, may also thanks to the very Italian studies taken by Zhao.
Looking at Zhao Huizhou’s works we can understand that the harmonious coexistence between such different ways to live and dressing up is possible, also in a more and more homologated, boring society like ours.
Since the dawn, in fact, the most interesting and beautiful things have been born from the bond of opposites, and courageous ideas of people like Zhao make us still believe in the wonder of forthcoming future.
