Fashion Design Applying Traditional Chinese Paper-Cut Art

Traditional Chinese paper-cut art as a folk art, which is inscribed on the UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, contains a long history and custom of China. The paper-cut is a craft technique which makes shapes with paper, scissors and a knife through techniques such as clipping, cutting and tearing. It has the meaning of primitive beliefs, annual cyclical rituals and pray, culture and custom, and practical decoration. The shapes and contents of chinese paper-cut are bold, vibrant and the colors are simple and clear. Recently, some designers have presented designs which got inspiration from the techniques, patterns and visual effects of Chinese paper-cut art. Also there have been several researches on Chinese paper-cut art trying to develop designs. However theses researches applied chinese paper-cut art in the traditional way only. Therefore modern and new approaches are needed for applying paper-cut art to develop creative fashion designs. In this paper, non-traditional patterns reflecting contemporary life and reinterpreting traditional patterns were developed, completed by Illustrator program and applied to fashion design. Also to express modern design style, colors of ivory, black and blue, the techniques of laser cutting and cut-and-paste were used. For the materials, artificial leather and silk organza were used. A total of 9 designs for vest, belt, necklace, collar, cuffs were developed and made reflecting the idea of fusing clothes and accessories. By applying traditional culture to fashion design in a new way, the results of this study will be helpful to develop creative fashion designs.