Designing a future in fashion

Exquisite ethnic craftsmanship, innovative fabrics and vibrant, eco-friendly palettes are showcased in competition, Xing Wen reports.

Chinese Japanese student Aya Maruyama's life was divided neatly into "before and after" the day she met the ethnic embroiderers of Southwest China's Guizhou province.

In 2016, then an international economics major at Beijing Foreign Studies University, Maruyama joined an embroidery promotional project as a translator.

Raised in Japan, she had never ventured into China's remote southwest, where the Bouyei and Miao ethnic groups inhabited misty mountains, their villages reachable only by foot.

There, she watched local embroiderers, without any sketches or patterns, sing songs while crafting intricate designs with needles.

"The embroidery was stunning," Maruyama recalls.

But her awe soon turned to dismay when she learned that the hand-stitched fabric sold for around 20 yuan ($2.8).

"The compensation didn't match the skills invested. Such exquisite craftsmanship deserves better recognition," she thought.

That trip soon ignited Maruyama's passion for China's ethnic traditional arts, which ultimately rerouted her career path.

Determined to bridge the gap between these crafts and modern consumers, she enrolled in the Academy of Arts and Design of Tsinghua University in 2021 to study fashion design.

She believes fashion can elevate the value of these cultural heritages and present them in innovative forms to more consumers.

Now a doctoral candidate, Maruyama recently claimed the gold prize at the LCTC Design Master Competition held in the Keqiao district of Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, with a collection inspired by the Bai ethnic group's traditional tie-dye techniques from Yunnan province.

Under her graduate mentor's guidance, Maruyama spent two weeks in Dali, Yunnan, working with local tie-dye artisans in 2022.

This immersion sparked her interest in plant-based dyes, whose eco-friendly properties align with her sustainable fashion philosophy. Since then, botanical dyeing has become central to her creative practice.