BEST GREEN FASHION FILM AWARD
The film, Preservation of Hezhen Fish Skin Tradition through Fashion Higher Education has won the Best Green Fashion Film award at the Milan Fashion Film Festival. The film identifies the historical, cultural, environmental, and socio-economic importance of fish skin as an innovative sustainable material. Secondarily, it proposes a vision of sustainability as an anthropological study of the resourcefulness and resilience of the Hezhen indigenous peoples, their lifestyles and fish skin practices; and third, it can help to preserve them. The application of the craft to fashion has been tested through a participatory workshop with fashion students from Central Saint Martins taught by Hezhen craftspeople to investigate how this material and the transmission of fish skin skills can contribute to sustainability practices in fashion. The Hezhen are one of China’s smallest ethnic minorities, living in northeastern China in the Amur river basin with a traditional economy based on hunting and fishing. In 2006, the Hezhen method of making clothes with fish skin was listed as intangible cultural heritage, and Wenfeng You—our main craftsperson during the workshop—was appointed its principal guardian.
Foning Bao participated in the Hezhen fish skin workshop. The experience of working with the Hezhen ethnic minority was invaluable for her. She collaborated with the Hezhen community to source the fish skin raw material, learned from their ancestral techniques and was inspired by their resourcefulness to create in her final year the CSM BA Knitwear collection. As a sustainable knitwear designer, she restricted herself to the use fish skin and ‘full fashion’ knit skills to build her entire final collection. Zero fabric, zero cut, and zero waste were the key points of her work. She used the fish skins in combination with crochet both in garments and accessories. The very humble material became fun, playful, and full of color.
The film Features Wenfeng You and Sun Yulin (Hezhen Indigenous fish skin craft inheritors) and Foning Bao (CSM BA Fashion Knit graduate). Art Directors are Elisa Palomino, Zhongjin Zhang (CSM BA Performance Design and Practice), and Joseph Boon (CSM BA Womenswear).