Find A Good Shop In Beijing With Clothes And Embroidery
Found A Good Shop With Ethnic Embroidery
Clothes make the woman. Want unique clothes highlighted with ethnic style? Come to “La Mu, the Lady Upstairs”, a shop near the Beijing Red Wall Hotel.
The shop owner, Ms. La Mu, has lots of colorful embroidered clothes, handbags and unique accessories. All of them are amazing! You will never find such items in any other shops.
La Mu told me many interesting stories about her designs. I liked a violet shirt embroidered with patterns of phoenixes and flowers. Thanks to her, I now know that this is a special embroidery made by Miao people named “Song Tao Embroidery.”
My favorite was a handbag with embroidered patterns on it, also made by La Mu herself. The embroidery on the bag is called “Da Zi,” a typical Miao embroidery style.
The whole shop is filled with beautiful clothes and bags, I like their exquisite handiwork and fresh colors.
She even has another studio in Lijiang, a beautiful town in Yunnan province. Most of the time, she designs clothes in that studio. The beautiful scenery of Lijiang offers inspiration for her creations.
Embroidered Peking Opera Masks
Peking Opera masks fascinate people from home and abroad. Long Xiu Ge, an embroidery shop in Dong Fang Gu Yuan Art Market, converts this great art into magic embroidery works. This shop is very close to the Avic Hotel.
Ms. Long, the shop owner of Long Xiu Ge, told me that she designed more than 100 Peking Opera masks with different patterns and colors. She surrounded herself with the world of Peking Opera in order to create these masks. In the past few years, she even watched all of the Peking Opera shows on TV.
I like her embroidery very much, especially those with vivid figures and animals. There is one in particular that caught my eye: an embroidery depicting cicadas and sparrows. The needlework is extremely exquisite. You can even see the seals of Emperor Qianlong and Emperor Xuantong!
My favorite embroidery piece featured fish swimming in a pool. The fish look like they will jump out of the cloth!
It takes months or even years for an experienced artisan to accomplish just one piece of embroidery work. Ms. Long says that most of her workers are between the ages of 40 to 70, as many youngsters today don’t have patience to do this time-consuming work.
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