On July 5, the second Shidong Miao Fashion Week opened at the Hewan Miao Research Institute in Taijiang County, Guizhou. Under the theme “Telling Stories in Mother’s Clothes,” 33 Miao women from villages across Shidong walked the runway, narrating in both Miao and Mandarin the life stories woven into garments passed down through generations of women in their families.
The event was co-hosted by the Hewan Miao Research Institute, Chengzhi Youde, and Baizhiping Village. Rather than a conventional catwalk, the participants were ordinary Miao women from local villages, not professional models. They wore heirloom festival attire inherited from grandmothers and mothers, bringing embroidered garments long stored in family chests back into public view with composure and pride.
“Miao costume is the core carrying Miao women’s life experiences, traditional aesthetics, and family roots,” said An Hong, founder of the Hewan Miao Research Institute. The event moves beyond pure costume display, focusing on “mother’s clothes, traditional stories,” and the native inheritance form of Miao culture rooted in the family and passed down generation to generation.
The competition introduced six evaluation dimensions — beauty of craft, beauty of confidence, beauty of inheritance, beauty of language, beauty of expression, and beauty of interpretation — breaking the single standard that “more elaborate equals better.” Judges weighed embroidery skill, storytelling power, bilingual expression, and stage presence, embracing women of different ages and styles.
Zeng Yue, founder of Chengzhi Youde, noted that cultural inheritance cannot be confined to museum cases and textbooks; it must return to the real-life scenes of ordinary people. The event gives every Miao woman the identity of “cultural narrator,” using clothing as a bond to pass both handcraft skills and family memory in both directions.
The event was livestreamed across multiple platforms, drawing nearly 10,000 viewers and almost 100,000 likes. Through digital dissemination, Shidong Miao costume culture moved from village stages to online spaces. Fu Guangxing, first secretary of Baizhiping Village stationed by Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, said the Shidong Miao Fashion Week, grounded in Taijiang’s Miao intangible heritage resources, holds practical significance for promoting the creative transformation and innovative development of ethnic culture.