When Folk Art Meets Fashion

This year’s Taipei Fashion Week brought together folk art and fashion, breathing life into the nation’s rich artistic heritage, all the while exploring the idea of “Taiwanese fashion”.

Sense of Wander: ★★★★☆

The exhibition, Folk Art and Fashion, is on view at the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute in Caotun, Nantou County.

CAOTUN, Taiwan — In front of a temple gate, projections and music filled the air. Ba Jia Jiang, also known as the Eight Generals, who only make appearances during religious processions, graced the runway. Dressed in embroidered garments and papier-mâché headdresses, they held goose feather fans in some of their hands. Their eerie makeups were designed to terrify onlookers, warding off evil spirits. Turning the catwalk into a parade, this captivating spectacle marked the opening of this year’s Taipei Fashion Week.

For those who missed the runway show, which took place in Tainan City earlier this spring, the fruits of this remarkable milestone in fashion can now be viewed at the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute (NTCRI) in Caotun, Nantou County.

Building on the success of the previous year, where indigenous art and fashion converged (as explored in “Indigenous Art Turned Chic”), Taipei Fashion Week continues to integrate the nation’s cultural identity into the world of fashion, spotlighting the wealth of Taiwan’s artistic heritage in this year’s showcase.

While Taiwan's folk art is most prominently found in religious settings, serving as a means to manifest the faithful’s devotions to the divine, fashion seeks for attention and spotlight on the runway amidst fierce competition. The interplay between these two forms of expression, folk art and fashion, situated at opposite ends of the creative spectrum, creates a canvas for boundless exploration and daring experimentation.

Seven designers participated in this edition of Taipei Fashion Week, each paired with a guardian of a different facet of folk art heritage, spanning from religious processions to traditional crafts, including temple painting, temple rituals, knot weaving, paper sculpture, shadow play, gezi opera, and lacquer.

A torri gate marks the entrance to Folk Art and Fashion exhibition

At the entrance to the exhibition, Folk Art and Fashion, an elegant contemporary torii — a traditional Japanese gate typically gracing the entrances of Shinto shrines — stands tall. This gate, which also serves as a poignant reminder of the island’s history under Japanese rule, leads us into the first gallery. Here, collections inspired by a realm designed for the divine summons the viewers, underlining the transition of this journey from the mundane world behind us to the sacred.

The Ba Jia Jiang plays a vital role in Taiwan's religious landscape. The memory of seeing these celestial beings, portrayed by religious troupe performers, is etched in the minds of most Taiwanese. Collaborating with the Founder of the Folk Parade Club affiliated with Zhen Shou Temple in Tainan City, designer Bob Jian transformed the story, characters, costumes, and facial makeups of this folk parade into stylish haute couture and fashionable items. Among the items on display, a puffy black coat stood out as an avant-garde and almost futuristic interpretation of this tradition.

Clothes inspired by Chou Yu-Ying fuse temple paintings and traditional auspicious motifs.

Inspired by the culture of the Eight Generals, designer Bob Jian reinterprets a venerable tradition with a contemporary aesthetic.

On the other hand, designer Justin Chou drew his inspiration from temple paintings, which feature elements commonly associated with temple architecture, including celestial guardians gracing temple doors, as well as dragons and auspicious patterns that embellish the surface of the temple’s structures. Chou collaborated closely with the Living National Treasure, Zhuang Wu-Nan (莊武男), a temple painter with over six decades of experience, whose works adorn esteemed temples like Taipei's Hsin Tian Temple and Dalongdong Baoan Temple.

To add another layer to this collaborative endeavour, Zhuang designed the “roundel words”, incorporating auspicious characters such as “longevity” (shou) and “fortune” (fu), which seamlessly integrated into Chou’s creative vision for fashion.

Set against the backdrop of temple doors painted with traditional motifs, Chou's designs exude cultural richness, and a touch of audacious spirits. What’s particularly intriguing is the recurring presence of basketball hats, each embroidered with the Chinese character “shen”, signifying “god”. This harks back to the designer's personal experience of witnessing his middle school baseball teammates being seemingly possessed by spirits.

Jian Chun-Yuan's design translates the golden hues and textures of lacquer art into three-dimensional wearable art. Both dresses shown here exude a sense of classic beauty when worn.

Artisan Chen Hsia-Sheng excels in transforming simple knots into intricate three-dimensional sculptures. This particular piece features a pair of phoenixes, a traditional symbol of peace, prosperity, and blessings.

Chen Hsia-Sheng's knot weaving work seamlessly integrates with Wei Tzu-Yuan's design, serving as a perfect example of the harmonious blend between tradition and contemporary style.

What makes the exhibition truly captivating is that, in addition to the fashion creations, we also have the privilege to witness the craftsmanship of Taiwan’s Living National Treasures. In particular, Chen Hsia-Sheng's traditional knot weaving work (陳夏生) stands out as a remarkable highlight. With just a simple piece of string, Chen masterfully combines basic knots to craft intricate designs, including mythological creatures, auspicious motifs and patterns. What's intriguing about her work is that most of her works on display are three-dimensional, adding a contemporary twist to the traditional art of knot weaving.

I was equally entranced by the intricate paper art sculpted by Chen I-Chang (陳一中). He skillfully sculpts a dragon emerging between the pages of an open book, surrounded by tiny butterflies and insects. Remarkably, the entire piece is crafted from the pages of three copies of the famous Journey to the West. The meticulous attention to detail in depicting the dragon and the presentation of the scene are simply mesmerising for those fortunate enough to witness them in person.

Hsu Yen-Lin's fashion collection, inspired by the art of paper sculpture, is complemented by a paper artwork placed in the centre.

Chen I-Chang's intricate paper sculpture showcases a dragon emerging from the pages of an open book.

In collaboration with the iconic figure of Gezi opera, Tang Me-Yun (唐美雲), designer Gioia Pan has fashioned a chic collection inspired by the artistic styles, costumes, characters, and motifs from this operatic tradition. While I fail to recognise the Taiwanese opera influence in the collection, one particular suit coat caught my attention. Featuring a captivating contrast of red embroideries against a plain black fabric, the coat's extended to the length of a mini-skirt length, highlights the gender-fluid culture inherent in Gezi opera, where female performers frequently take on male roles, and vice versa.

It appears that the biggest challenge for designers is not lack of inspiration, but how to infuse the essence of these artistic traditions into fashion, effectively translating its language rather than merely adopting elements and "implanting" them into the world of fashion. When it’s not executed properly, as seen in some items on display, certain aspects of these folk traditions can get lost in translation.

The exhibition culminates with a video showcasing the runway presentation of 2023 Taipei Fashion Week, offering a glimpse into the dynamic nature of these fashion pieces when they’re worn. It's intriguing to witness the metamorphosis of these garments from stillness to motion. Some of the outfits, which may seem unremarkable when displayed on mannequins, unexpectedly come to life on the runway. It's evident that the 2023 Taipei Fashion Week holds its own and is no less inferior with the likes of Christian Dior's Fall 2023 collection presented in Mumbai.

Fashion designer Gioia Pan created this opulent suit coat, with a length extending to that of a mini skirt, to represent the gender-fluid culture of Gezi opera.

The shadow puppets crafted by the Tung-Hua Shadow Puppet Theatre in Kaohsiung city, the oldest of its kind in Taiwan, serve as the muse for Tang Tsung-Chien's fashion collection.

"A century ago, Yen Shui-Long, a pioneer in the arts, advocated for the creation of a cultural economy through art," notes the exhibition in its closing statement. It's intriguing to think that a century later, traditional arts have become a vehicle for shaping cultural identity — a driving creative force in both the fashion industry and the economy, playing a crucial role in Taiwan's soft power strategy.

Folk Art and Fashion is a crossroad where folk arts and crafts meet. In a post-industrial era where technology can replicate almost anything, replacing traditional craftsmanship with plastics, handwriting with typing, and hand painting with computer-generated art software, this year’s edition of Taipei Fashion Week prompts us to question the value of handcraft and folk art.

With master artisans actively engaging in dialogues with contemporary designers, there is hope that we can rekindle an era where people's lives are enriched by arts and crafts. This way, more individuals can assume the role of guardians or keepers of these venerable traditions, for the responsibility lies not only with their practitioners but also with everyone contributing to the building of the nation’s cultural identity.

Folk Art and Fashion, now on view at the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute in Caotun, Nantou County, runs until October 20, 2023.