Sustainable Fashion with Traditional Chinese Needlework

Inspired by the Chinese knots, Polly has made a Qipao by using about 2000 pairs of handmade Chinese knot buttons. Designers Polly Ho and Andy Wong want to call people’s attention to the value of old traditional techniques and promote sustainable fashion through this dress. Fast fashion has dominated the fashion industry, quality is no longer prioritized. However, overconsumption might happen more frequently since low-quality goods have a shorter life span and need to be replaced much more often. Polly wants to remind people that quality clothes can pass decades to our next generation by using high-quality handmade needlework for this Qipao. Creating this Qipao involved the making of knot buttons which is a kind of traditional Chinese needlework techniques. The history of knot buttons began in the Zhou Dynasty in China. Each button embodiesthis valuable skills, however if no more people learn this technique, it may lose in the future.

Bio
Designer Polly Ho graduated from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, going on to study at the University of Central England. She acted as a fashion consultant for a number of China brands before launched her own brand, Loom Loop in 2013. Loom Loop’s first collection was launched in spring/summer 2014, prior to Ho winning a corporate fashion project for Philippe Starck’s new South Beach hotel in Singapore. Since then, she joined Tokyo Fashion Week with a catwalk show in 2015, 2016 & 2017; and she presented another catwalk shows at the official New York Fashion Week 2016 and 2017.