Designing a future in fashion

Exquisite ethnic craftsmanship, innovative fabrics and vibrant, eco-friendly palettes are showcased in competition, Xing Wen reports.

Chinese Japanese student Aya Maruyama's life was divided neatly into "before and after" the day she met the ethnic embroiderers of Southwest China's Guizhou province.

In 2016, then an international economics major at Beijing Foreign Studies University, Maruyama joined an embroidery promotional project as a translator.

Raised in Japan, she had never ventured into China's remote southwest, where the Bouyei and Miao ethnic groups inhabited misty mountains, their villages reachable only by foot.