Xu Ming, 39, does not look as gorgeous as the costumes she designs.
But the Northeast-China-born woman does link the East and West by her designs.
Graduating from the Paris ESMOD Fashion School, giving exhibitions in Europe, flying between France and China frequently, addicted to both tea and coffee and preferring to dress herself in traditional Chinese styles, Xu is a combination of Western and traditional Chinese cultures.
Her "Bronze" collection, featuring Chinese bronze ware and calligraphy and Western sculpture and plastic arts, won wide acclaim in the city of romance, when it was exhibited at the Galeries Lafayette, one of the most well-known department stores in Paris, between January 22 and February 24, 2003.
Now the costume collection has been invited to be exhibited at the Musikenfete, a museum of traditional musical entertainment in Montoire, as part of the French town's 2003-2004 Year of China festival.
With dark-brown-painted faces, the models wear the plastic and silk-made suit of armor and unique-styled helmets.
Every detail, from the delicate veins of the bronze ware, to the zhongdingwen, traditional Chinese calligraphic inscriptions on ancient bronze ware, printed in the brown silk dresses to the long flowing sleeves, all tell of the profoundness of history.
In Xu's own words, it reflects the contrast of ancient and modern, war and peace, man and woman, West and East.
The plastic-made bronze armor displays manliness and virility; the soft silk suggests graceful femininity. But the exaggerated styles and reserved beauty are well integrated into her designs.
Xu first designed the collection for the opening ceremony of the 21st World University Games in August 2001.
"Director Chen Weiya asked for a code to symbolize the ancient and mysterious oriental culture. The entertainers dressed as terracotta warriors in the first half of the show, so I set on the bronze figures," she said.
The next year, she revised the collection into 60 sets to attend the 3rd Hangzhou International West Lake Expo in October in east China's Zhejiang Province. And the showcase at the Galeries Lafayette is the third stop of the collection.
Early interest
Xu's initial interest in design came from her parents who had both studied at Harbin Arts Academy in the early 1950s.
Xu Xinhua, her father, learned painting and the history of Western arts and later taught in the academy. And her mother Yu Yuanting was a costume designer at the Harbin Drama Theatre.
"I believe I have the arts in my blood," she said.
Besides enjoying going with her parents to draw from nature, she was more fascinated in the costumes designed by her mother.
"How beautiful if I could wear those dresses! The idea kept lingering in my mind, although I knew those were only fit for the stage performance," she said.
Her mother sensed that and sometimes made clothes for her. "Those clothes were stylish compared to what my fellow kids wore at that time," Xu added.
In the 1970s, most Chinese people including the youth were dressed in green and blue and in a stereotyped and conservative style. So once she wore a jean and a denim vest, all her classmates envied her.
"I loved it so much and did not want to change into other clothes for a week," she recalled fondly.
Meanwhile, the little girl liked to dress up herself. Xu said, she was fond of draping herself with a sheet and coverlet in various ways, or, cutting and making clothes for herself.
"Most of the 'dresses' were bizarre and rebellious," Xu said.
Career path
But the daughter of a designer did not start her own career as a designer. It seems that life played a trick on her. Xu entered a teachers' school in east China's Anhui Province where she received training to be a sports teacher between 1984 and 1986.
However, Xu is destined to live for her designs. After graduation, she applied to work at a fur and feather manufacturer in Qinhuangdao, in north China's Hebei Province, and succeeded.
Without any academic background, Xu worked on the whole technical process from designing, choosing materials and making samples to cutting and sewing.
One year later came another accident. A friend invited her to design costumes for a show in Harbin, the capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. But the schedule would interfere with her other work.
"All out of a young woman's vanity, I chose to leave the company. What a great thing, I could design all the costume for a gala show which all my hometown people would see, that's what I was thinking at the moment," she said.
"However, what frustrated me most was when I woke up from the success the morning after the show, I suddenly found I had no idea what to do," she said.
Realizing her shortage of knowledge and techniques of design, Xu decided to undertake further study.
"One year of experience at the manufacturing company did improve my handicraft skills, but with some simple information learned from some fashion magazines and my mother, I had known how hard to turn a design in my mind into a real dress," she said.
So one year later, Xu applied to the Central Academy of Arts and Design in Beijing.
Since 1993, Xu has become an active costume designer. She designed for many shows and ceremonies including the Dalian International Fashion Week, Shanghai Opera Theatre's production of "Troilus and Cressida," the opening ceremony for 1996 Asian Winter Games, the 1998 CCTV Spring Festival Variety Show and the First China International Acrobatics Festival.
Meanwhile, she took part in some fashion contests, as China had not clearly distinguished between dramatic costume and fashion design in the 1990s. She won several awards in these contests.
In 1997, Xu won an award at the "Brother Cup" International Fashion Contest for Young Designers, a high-level annual fashion contest in China.
Turning point
The prize was not her only reward, she got to know a professor at ESMOD, who served as a judge for that year's contest. He advised and recommended her to the renowned fashion school in Paris.
"I was wondering whether I should go at that time, because I was rising in the field at home. And I was 34," she said.
Xu had two choices: One was to become a well-known designer in China, the other was to go abroad to be a fashion student.
"It was my mother who gave me the right direction," Xu recalled. "As a designer, it's short-sighted to be satisfied with what you have achieved at home. We all know Paris is the city of fashion, but what exactly made it so? Go there to see and then bring something back," her mother said.
Bearing her mother's words in mind, Xu arrived in Paris in January 1998.
At ESMOD, Xu majored in dramatic costume design.
In China, fashion design is a very young profession with only a 20-year history. So people confused fashion and costume for a long time. The domestic fashion schools have no special costume design department, and only a few academies of drama and theatres have some courses, she said.
"Fashion is an industry, while costume design is closer to art," she said.
Xu worked hard and finally got a satisfactory result from ESMOD and gained the second highest mark in her class. She was assigned to design costumes for 100 figures selected from a play of Catherine II, apply color on 50 of the 100, then choose materials and make samples for 10 of the 50.
From ESMOD Xu brought back a combination of European and traditional Chinese cultures. She picked up some symbols from Chinese traditions and then put them into more contemporary designs.
While still working on her "Bronze" series, Xu is also thinking about adapting elements of the traditional Peking Opera into her future designs, but declined to reveal any further details.
"My designs reflect traditional art through a modern lens," she says.
(China Daily June 20, 2003)
