A post-2000s student team led by Liu Yi has built what it calls China’s first complete digital gene library for Huizhou-embroidered qipao, pairing two years of field research with a self-developed AI custom tailoring model. China Daily reported that the intelligent customization system reached the market in 2026, opening a path of technological revitalization, industrial application and cultural going-global for a craft on the verge of a transmission gap.
Liu Yi is an “00s-born” college student who ranks in the top five percent of her major and has won more than 30 awards, including the National Endeavor Scholarship. While studying garment design, she completed several hundred handmade qipao on her own, mastering the core traditional techniques behind Huizhou embroidery, including layered Dazi embroidery and flat-stitch embroidery. At the end of 2024 she launched a two-year, ten-city market survey across Suzhou, Hefei, Hangzhou, Huangshan and elsewhere, visiting 58 Huizhou embroidery and silk qipao workshops and holding more than 100 sessions with artisans. The research surfaced three industry pain points: market styles are highly homogeneous and traditional qipao silhouettes look dated, with weak original design; fewer than 15,000 practitioners nationwide master the complete Huizhou embroidery craft, the master-apprentice oral model is inefficient, and there is no standardized digital library of motifs and patterns; and a full bespoke order runs 7 to 15 days from design, hand pattern-making and embroidery to delivery, with multiple physical samples consuming large amounts of fabric and labor.
From December 2024 to early 2026, the team pushed through four R&D phases: collecting a massive archive of traditional Huizhou motifs and training a foundation model for the craft between December 2024 and March 2025; consolidating four databases — motifs, patterns, components and cases — from April to July 2025; completing system integration and virtual-simulation debugging from August to December 2025; and launching the full intelligent customization system to the market in 2026. The resulting “Tiangong” qipao gene library, built over more than a year, fills a domestic gap in digital preservation of Huizhou embroidery qipao. The model breaks the old reliance on physical fittings and hand-drawn motifs: a customer enters height, weight, three measurements and arm length, and the system one-click matches tens of thousands of intangible-heritage motifs with standardized patterns, generates a real-time 3D virtual qipao for visual verification, and eliminates two rounds of muslin trial garments, sharply cutting fabric waste.
Underpinning the service is a digital closed loop: data entry, intelligent pattern design, automatic motif generation, modular component matching, 3D virtual simulation, and CNC cutting and embroidery. The traditional 7-to-15-day single-order delivery window has been compressed to 1 to 3 days, and the 4-to-8 hours of manual drawing in pattern-making is now done automatically through parametric AI. The project holds 3 invention patents, 3 utility-model patents and 2 computer software copyrights, and has produced 15 original series totaling 4,286 new qipao designs, while fully preserving the core craft data of traditional Huizhou embroidery.
On the revenue side, Liu Yi set up a three-tier model. The first tier is bespoke qipao design service, priced at 999 yuan per design or 4,999 yuan for a six-piece package, aimed at individual clients, cultural-creative companies and apparel design firms. The second is platform leasing of the intelligent design system at 18,000 to 50,000 yuan per year, lowering the design threshold for small and mid-sized apparel businesses. The third is IP licensing of intangible-heritage motifs and patterns, which contributes about 30 percent of revenue. The overall income mix is roughly 50 percent design services, 20 percent software leasing and 30 percent IP licensing.
School-enterprise cooperation anchors industrial application. Liu Yi’s team signed a long-term strategic partnership with Hefei Huixiu Yuncheng Culture Technology Co., the province’s largest Huizhou embroidery qipao manufacturer, to co-build a digital R&D center: the team supplies the full AI algorithm suite, gene database and smart process technology, while the company operates embroidery studios and production lines, with both sides sharing e-commerce, cultural-tourism and study-tour channels. The team also drew on its simplified Huizhou-style motif library to advise on uniform design for Anhui’s comprehensive administrative law enforcement bureau, weaving Huizhou landscape and brick-carving elements into chest badges, cuffs and sleeve ornaments. Overseas, the team has exported 120 qipao through Amazon and AliExpress cross-border e-commerce, offered bespoke services to overseas Chinese community organizations, and launched digital collectibles and offline intangible-heritage experience classes.
Liu Yi’s team directly created 25 jobs in 2026 and projects another 320 indirect positions from 2027 to 2030 across fabric suppliers, embroidery workshop workers, e-commerce operations and logistics. Its roadmap for 2027-2028 calls for expanding the “Tiangong” gene library from 32,000 to 45,000 motif samples, covering 35 intangible-heritage industry clusters nationwide, growing e-commerce partners to 30, introducing IoT-based smart production monitoring, and targeting annual revenue of 4 to 5 million yuan. Longer term, the team plans to push the project overseas, co-found intangible-heritage digital labs with universities at home and abroad, help set industry standards, and build an international guofeng apparel brand with a revenue goal above 45 million yuan.