Photo: Courtesy of the People's Government of Puyuan Town

On Friday, under the theme "Weaving Without Borders," the 2025 Puyuan Fashion Week officially opened in Puyuan town of Tongxiang in East China's Zhejiang Province.

Hosted by the Puyuan Tourism Co, the five-day fashion week brings together major runway shows, cross-disciplinary activities, and immersive lifestyle experiences throughout the town. Centered on knitwear, the event blends technology, theater, music, and intangible cultural heritage, crafting a new fashion narrative within the textures of this thousand-year-old water town. 

The unique model of "Ancient Town + Industry + Fashion" illustrates Puyuan's transformation from a traditional knitwear hub into a global center of knitwear fashion, offering a sustainable "Chinese example" to the global fashion industry and telling a compelling story of Chinese cultural and industrial integration in the new era.

A stage interweaving East and West

This year's fashion week highlights the distinctive character of the ancient town, creating immersive fashion stages through sound and light shows in multiple locations. The opening ceremony was held at the Zen Hall, a local cultural landmark. 

The opening show featured more than 50 classic pieces from past Paris Fashion Weeks presented by distinguished global collectors, showcasing the elegance and timeless artistry of French haute couture. The closing show, presented by LANYU under the theme "Spring Breeze Dyes the Green," will use couture bridal gowns to portray the perfect fusion of Eastern aesthetics and knit craftsmanship, incorporating the ink wash tones of Jiangnan (the region south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China) and the intricacy of heritage embroidery. 

This dialogue between tradition and modern tailoring expresses a contemporary interpretation of "neo-Chinese aesthetics," presenting "life as aesthetics" and offering the world an example of Chinese beauty.

 In the professional segment, four major brand shows and seven local designer showcases complemented the Zen Hall runway. Tension Archive designer Lin Jinjing explored the flexibility of knit fabrics using biodegradable yarn and beaded materials, celebrating the natural beauty of the female form. Fashion brand AQUA LIXUN SU redefined knitwear through 3D tailoring and innovative structures. Fashion brand SHUXUAN G reinterpreted Eastern aesthetics using deconstruction, ancient ceramics, and plant dyes to create a "wearable epic." Meanwhile, designer brand r.l.e advocated for sustainable romanticism, treating garments as a "second skin" through craftsmanship and circular design.

Local brands such as Erzhibainian, Ziranjianji, 4536, Xuerongnuo, Nüerqiao, and Shizhuang leveraged Puyuan's strong industrial cluster to showcase the depth and vitality of local knitwear. The concurrent "Puyuan Cup - Extraordinary Weaving" emerging designer initiative further energized young talent, transforming creativity into production and helping original Chinese design take root in Puyuan.

This rich lineup reflects the fashion world's attempts to break away from traditional frameworks, moving beyond single aesthetic systems, and growing a future-oriented fashion language rooted in history - one that integrates technology, craft, sustainability, and local culture. Chinese knitwear is evolving from traditional manufacturing to a global narrative.

Multidimensional crossovers break fashion boundaries

This year's Puyuan Fashion Week breaks through tradition, integrates technology, art, and social issues such as virtual fashion, robotic fashion, and eco-friendly materials. It pushes the boundaries of fashion, builds digital show spaces, and combines the ancient town, intangible cultural heritage, and local culture. The virtual and real, classical and technological elements overlap and interact in Puyuan, passing down craftsmanship and the convergence of boundless innovation. It creates a "Fashion+" creative fashion week model, realizing the experimental nature of fashion expression and artistic innovation. At the same time, through these cutting-edge practices, it organically links Chinese intangible cultural heritage (ICH) with modern digital technology, making ancient craftsmanship shine with the vitality of contemporary expression.

The immersive performance Rain at Midnight · Wish co-created by the Beijing Modern Dance Company and knitwear designers, dynamically integrated dance movements with garment structure, causing the fabric to change shape according to body language. A music fashion show by jazz band Mr. Miss and the brand MISHEN triggered LED color changes in clothing through improvisational performances, realizing real-time interaction between audio and visuals. 

Yu Yimeng from the Central Academy of Fine Art and EngineAI presented Reborn Forms · Robot Fashion Show, bringing cutting-edge technology into the warp and weft of fabric, jointly creating a trendy fashion feast where weaving genes and digital "intelligent" manufacturing merge and enhance each other. Additionally, The Game for Peace game IP crosses over into fashion week for the first time, transforming virtual game skins into physical luxury garments in a digital fashion show that uses holographic projection technology, bringing virtual fashion to life in a real-world space.

From water ways to temples, from ancient bridges to boats, the 2025 Puyuan Fashion Week has transformed the ancient town into a natural stage for art shows. With every step, visitors encounter a new immersive viewing experience, as technology and humanity engage in a dialogue across time and space on the town's flagstone paths - truly achieving a "show everywhere" spatial transformation. In the process of reimagining crossover settings, Puyuan town is gradually becoming a lifestyle aesthetic space that breaks down social barriers and blends cultural and social elements, revealing new possibilities for the development of the cultural tourism industry.

Diverse activities embody lifestyle aesthetics

Puyuan Fashion Week is set in the thousand-year-old water town, forming a distinctive cultural tourism IP shaped by Puyuan town through a "culture and tourism + industry" model. During this edition, a "Lifestyle Aesthetics" section has been introduced - including haute couture exhibitions, patchwork art, knitting workshops, sustainability labs, sculpture workshops, and creative markets - offering immersive fashion week experiences from multiple angles: appreciation, reflection, and discovery. This life-centered design approach not only extends the public dimension of fashion but also provides modern people with a co-creative space where aesthetics and practice coexist.

The LANYU Radiant Threads Haute Couture art exhibition draws from the traditional patchwork techniques of ICH to extract a dialectical aesthetic of "fragmentation and wholeness," presenting a poetic chapter of heritage couture. The Jinyuan Patchwork Art Exhibition uses recycled fabrics to express the power of environmental consciousness and female creativity. At JOIE's "Knitting Workshop," visitors are invited to experience hands-on yarn weaving and handmade crafts. The "Once More Use Sustainability Workshop" by Snowline focuses on upcycling old clothes, conveying the concept that "fun is the key to sustainability." The "Monster Market" gathers trendy toys and designer brands to create a socially vibrant creative marketplace. 

In addition, there are nighttime carnivals, Puyuan parades, and electronic music festivals - activities that blend day and night, merging diverse lifestyles into one and allowing every visitor to Puyuan to experience a joyful fashion celebration amid its natural and rustic charm.

Blending ancient charm with contemporary flair, Puyuan provides a new model for coordinating tourism and fashion, showcasing the town as a rising creative landmark. It vividly interprets the phrase "Your fashion, my lifestyle."

Building a new knitwear fashion powerhouse

This year's Puyuan Fashion Week featured nine special sessions of "Puyuan Talks," bringing together designers, original design manufacturer companies, and yarn producers to jointly explore supply chain integration and quality upgrades. With professional depth and sincere collaboration, the talks focused on industry frontiers and mapped out a strategic blueprint - laying the foundation for the next decade of fashion development.

In terms of talent ecosystem development, the "Little Puyuan Fashion Designers" program encourages local primary school students to create clothing using recycled yarn, with their works exhibited at the ancient town's market - fulfilling a generational transmission of fashion education. The Extraordinary Weaving Emerging Designer Initiative recruits young designers from around the world and provides a platform for creative incubation. Meanwhile, the Longteng Elite Model Contest selects top models through a professional process, supplying the industry with talents that combine market potential and artistic expression.

As a national hub of the knitwear industry, Puyuan town uses Fashion Week as a driving force to build a platform supporting emerging designers, invigorate the local creative ecosystem, and foster a healthy cycle between industry and talent. By connecting with international resources, it promotes deep collaboration between Chinese designers and the global fashion world. While preserving its cultural and historical roots, Puyuan town is also cultivating a forward-looking industrial ecosystem, creating a dynamic and self-sustaining model of Chinese knitwear fashion. In doing so, it further advances the transformation and upgrading of Puyuan's knitwear industry, paving the way for a sustainable fashion future driven by intelligent manufacturing.

The 2025 Puyuan Fashion Week is not just a visual feast - this fashion celebration themed "Weaving Without Borders" is dissolving the boundaries between industries and lifestyles, urban and rural, tradition and modernity. Here, every thread of yarn carries with it a dream of the future. The story of Puyuan continues to unfold, weaving together heritage and innovation, industry and everyday life, the East and the world, into a new chapter of the times.