Shenyang, the birthplace of qipao tailoring and qipao culture, has been accompanied by qipao for years. This unique cultural symbol, combining the city’s ancient charm and fashion, elegance and passion, adds a unique flavor to Shenyang’s cultural inheritance and strengthens the city’s cultural confidence.
When did qipao appear in Shenyang?
The city’s profound history and thousand-year cultural context provide rich nourishment for the development and inheritance of qipao culture. Dating back to 1636 in Shenyang, qipao has gone through nearly 400 years. It has weathered the years but still shines brightly, making the city show a unique taste – elegant, fashionable and vibrant through this special clothing. Today’s Shenyang is developing with new vitality and speed. As one of the city’s business cards, Shenyang qipao has witnessed the growth of the nation through vicissitudes and the cultural inheritance and fashion vitality in the new era. Qipao grows and develops together with Shenyang.
Shenyang qipao’s performance on the international stage
At the recent bright T-stage of MULHOUSE Fashion Week in Paris, France, Shenyang qipao designer Han Yang made a stunning appearance with a new qipao series. While retaining the traditional stand-up collar and frog buttons, Han Yang’s local team boldly broke through the inherent paradigm of traditional qipao’s “broad shoulders and narrow sleeves”. They added many modern design elements to the qipao, such as different style treatments at the slits, adding a skirt hem or decorations at the cuffs. The patterns and materials of the qipao also absorb different aesthetic cultures.
Many foreigners are attracted and shocked by the new-style traditional Chinese clothing, marveling at the infinite charm of Chinese clothing. At the 2025 Shenyang Lotus Culture Festival, models walked slowly on the stage in bubble-sleeve qipao, bringing people a different visual effect and fashion expression of qipao. The classic silhouette of a tight waist and hip-hugging was replaced by a large and wide skirt. When walking, it was just like lotus flowers swaying in the wind. This “liberation from restraints” design gives women more free dynamic expression. Such a design not only inherits the oriental elegance presented by traditional qipao but also echoes the spirit of modern women’s combination of hardness and softness.
Shenyang’s new-style qipao
Shenyang’s new-style qipao shows the world not only changes in external shape but also the contemporary expression of cultural translation. Han Yang’s “Qipao Ancient Capital” series takes the golden tiles and red walls of Shenyang Forbidden City as color inspiration. It also extracts the flowing curve elements of the Hunhe River bank as the basis for the cutting of the skirt hem. Moreover, Han Yang brings Shenyang’s profound industrial heritage to clothing design. The outline structure of industrial gears has become a new collar style in Han Yang’s qipao series, combining hardness and softness, and cultural integration. On her qipao, we can also see French patterns and embroidery lines. Han Yang skillfully uses the inclusiveness of qipao to present us a grand display of new-style qipao with coexisting multiple elements, making foreign fashion lovers cheer for traditional Chinese clothing.
The contemporary transformation of Shenyang qipao is just as designer Han Yang said: “It is Shenyang that gives the cultural foundation, and the world that gives the wings of innovation.” Shenyang is using the creativity of a city to make this century-old clothing bloom with irreplaceable vitality in the wave of globalization.
