Eight hundred and twelve designs is a number worth a sentence. Before any garment reaches our line sheet, it is reviewed by our on-staff textile historian against period references held in our Suzhou archive — excavated tomb rubbings, Ming court wardrobe inventories, Song dynasty illustrated manuals, and the restoration notes kept by the Hangzhou Silk Museum.
The review looks at three things. Construction: seam allowances, pleat direction, sleeve geometry, the way a cross-collar is meant to sit on the shoulder before it is sized for a non-Asian body. Cloth: weave structure, dye families, the weight a brocade should carry before embroidery is applied. Embellishment: which motifs belonged to which rank, which season, which ceremony — and which did not.
A design is returned to the studio floor if any of those three questions are answered loosely. We accept that this slows the catalog by about a month per cycle. We consider it the only honest way to sell 812 pieces under a Hanfu label.
— Dr. L. Wen, Textile Historian
On staff since 2014 · previously, Zhejiang Provincial Silk Museum conservation unit