The Journey of Silk to the International Fashion Design World

Abstract

The eastern cultural elements, especially represented by Chinese traditional cultural elements, are widely applied in the fashion design when some major international fashion brands introduce the latest design to the world. Silk as one of main factors of Chinese culture has caught lots of attention of international fashion designers and has won great recognition in the western world. The mixtures of cultural elements give those international fashion brands big profits both in the publicity and economy. However at present in china silk is mainly employed into the bed clothing design, underwear design and craft design. Although there are some designers who try silk into the fashion design, the patterns they use are mostly the Chinese traditional ones. The limit of patterns and styles of silk design puts the domestic silk fashion design in the dilemma. The success of the employment of eastern cultural elements of those international fashion brands inspires a new trend of the silk fashion design. This thesis will try to explore approaches to combine the western cultural elements and Chinese traditional cultural elements into the silk fashion design. And at the same time, we like to talk about the concepts of using the Chinese traditional ways of sewing and embroidery in the showing western cultural elements by silk. Also we want to discuss the new access of the silk to the international fashion design world.