Taking a deep dive into Guizhou's ethnic attire

There's a folk saying in multiethnic southwestern China that goes: "Costume, a great philosophy of life, is a dialogue between the heart and the outside world and the soul that's worn on the body."

It's this discourse between the individual and the societal, and the physical attire in which we wrap our spirits that outfits the ethos of the Guizhou Multicolor Art and National Costume Museum.

The museum is a passion project, a nonprofit nongovernmental institution devoted to collecting, displaying, researching and spreading awareness of clothing and accessories made by the region's ethnic groups, especially the 48 that inhabit Guizhou province.

"Most ethnic groups in Guizhou have no written language. Their records are mainly in the form of the needles and threads in women's hands," museum founder Chen Yueqiao says.

"They are dyed, woven and embroidered into patterns on costumes that can be easily transferred. These ethnic histories can be transformed into a cultural symbol on costumes and kept from generation to generation."

Some of the most formal costumes, such as those worn for festivals and weddings, take years, or even up to a decade, to complete — in stark contrast to the minimally ornamented clothing designed for hard labor or housework.

The textiles come in the form of everything from brocade and batik to embroidery on linen, silk, cotton, wool and leather, and are worn accentuated by jewelry and other adornments.

Chen and her team traveled hundreds of kilometers to over 100 villages, including many small settlements hidden deep in the mountains, to gather tens of thousands of items. They amassed a collection of over 3,000 costumes, 2,000 baby carriers and 20,000 samples of embroidery from ethnic groups like the Miao, Yao, Dong, Sui, Li and Bouyei. The collection also includes many of the implements used to make garments and adornments.

The public can visit the 3,000-square-meter exhibition hall, which also serves as a training center for the Guiyang Vocational and Technical College in Guizhou's provincial capital for free. However, the institution's promotion of ethnic attire extends beyond its walls, to the wider world. It has donated 28 outfits to the National Museum of China and 10 pieces of embroidery to UNESCO office in Beijing.

It has also organized exhibitions in two dozen countries, including Mexico, the Czech Republic, Colombia, Denmark, Malta and Brazil. The Guizhou Multicolor Art and National Costume Museum also produces academic papers and popular bilingual books dedicated to expanding understanding of Guizhou's cultural legacies.

These efforts stitch together a unified understanding of human diversity in the province and beyond and ask us to think more deeply about the ways we cover our bodies and, in the process, reveal our souls.