Tucked away in a Beijing alleyway, the artsy studio and boutique of fashion designer Kathrin von Rechenberg stands out in a city filled with shiny new malls and mega-brand flagships. Her intricate, contemporary silk pieces in earthy colors are created using a fabric-dyeing technique which dates back to the Ming dynasty calledxiangyunxia, or tea silk.

When she made the unlikely decision over a decade ago to leave the global fashion capital of Paris for Beijing after working with couture fashion houses including Dior, Christian Lacroix, and Chanel, she had her work cut out for her in convincing China’s newly wealthy consumers to take interest in the ancient fabric. Starting her label Rechenberg in 2004, the designer was attracting almost exclusively expats as China’s new rich were developing their

love affair with brands like Louis Vuitton and Gucci.

“No Chinese was interested in the xiangyunxia,” she says. “The only Chinese clients I had at that time were from Hong Kong, China, from Taiwan, China, overseas Chinese.” The tea silk was regarded as too “old-looking” or too much like something their grandmother would wear, she says.

Over a decade later, it’s a different story—more than half of her customers are mainland Chinese as tastes are quickly evolving in China’s fashion market. “Recently, the Chinese consumers have been looking for this kind of stuff,” she says. “It’s really a complete change.”

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(Source: jingdaily)