Miao costumes

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Yi costumes

The Yi ethnic group, one of the 56 ethnic groups in China, is mainly distributed over the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou, and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Most Yis are scattered in mountain areas, some in frigid mountain areas at high altitudes, and a small number live on flat land or in valleys. The altitudinal differences of the Yi areas directly affect their climate and precipitation. Their striking differences have given rise to the old saying that "the weather is different a few miles away" in the Yi area. This is the primary reason why the Yis in various areas are so different from one another in the ways they make a living.

Yi costume is great in variety, with different designs for different places. In the Liangshan Mountains and west Guizhou, men wear black jackets with tight sleeves and right-side askew fronts, and pleated wide-bottomed trousers. Men in some other areas wear tight-bottomed trousers. They grow a small patch of hair three or four inches long on the pate, and wear a turban made of a long piece of bluish cloth. The end of the cloth is tied into the shape of a thin, long awl jutting out from the right-hand side of the forehead. They also wear on the left ear a big yellow and red pearl with a pendant of red silk thread. Women wear laced or embroidered jackets and pleated long skirts hemmed with colourful multi-layer laces. Black Yi women used to wear long skirts reaching to the ground, and women of other social ranks wore skirts reaching only to the knee. Some women wear black turbans, while middle-aged and young women prefer embroidered square kerchiefs with the front covering the forehead like a rim. They also wear earrings and like to pin silver flowers on the collar. Men and women, when going outdoors, wear a kind of dark cape made of wool and hemmed with long tassels reaching to the knee. In winter time, they lined their capes with felt.

He Yan started collecting Miao and Yi costumes from the late 1980s. Since then, almost every year He Yan and her husband Junfeng Gao spent some time in Guizhou and Yunnan provinces to collect traditional ethnic costumes. The earliest piece of her collection can be traced back to the late Ming period (early 16th century). Over the years, He Yan has collected over a thousand distinctive ethnic group costumes which primarily are from the Miao and Yi group as well as from the Yao ethnic group. These unique collections have formed one of the largest and finest in the field of ethnic minority costumes both inside and outside China. He Yan's collections often become valuable resource and inspirations of her unique design. Since 2000, she has been analysing and documenting the techniques of her collection. Due to most of the collection is completely unknown to scholars, her ambition is one day to hold exhibitions in museums for the benefit of scholars and the public.