Source: CCTV.com

11-06-2007 08:48

Sleek and sinuous like the "north eastern tiger", luxurious ball room gowns and party dresses from the line of N. E. Tiger highlight Beijing fashion week. The line began as a luxe fur maker, and in keeping with the adventurous spirit of the regal feline, for which it is named, it branched out.

Saturday night, at Beijing Fashion Week, Chinese luxury fashion label NE Tiger presented its haute couture collection for Spring/Summer 2008.

Models strode the runway in color-soaked, jewel-encrusted, heavily embroidered gowns. The show bore many similarities to "Phoenix," the previous collection sent out by designer Zhang Zhifeng for fall -winter 2006.

For the coming season, Tiger returned to its natural habitat, deep in the jungle. The intricate patterns adorning shoulders and breastplates are based on original forms discovered in the wilds where the designer and his team traveled far and wide. They looked to "folk art" where it still exists in its most organic and natural form.

So proud the designer is of his country's own fashion heritage that right before the show started, he announced what could only be called "A Declaration of the Revival of Chinese Fashion".

Zhang Zhifeng, designer of NE Tiger, said, "The Japanese have kimonos, the Indians have saris. What we have that we can call our national clothes? Cheong-sam maybe. But in my view, the lexicon of the Chinese fashion is much, much broader than a high-slit and a stiff collar. And it is the mission of NE Tiger to explore that language and to articulate it in a contemporary way."