Hanfu Makeup Artists: Find Inspiration for Makeup Creation in History and Culture

With the emergence of a large number of hanfu lovers, the demand for hanfu costumes is also increasing, and the fusion of these elements such as hanfu costumes, hairpins, and earrings has become a must-have option for hanfu lovers. With this, many traditional makeup artists seize this trend to transform into hanfu makeup artists, this career is gradually emerging.

Familiarity with different dynasties of hanfu makeup styling is a basic skill

For Yang Yuan, a hanfu makeup artist, who runs a hanfu experience store, she has done hanfu makeup styling for about a thousand customers in her 3 years of experience. For a hanfu stylist, the most solid basic skill is to be familiar with different dynasties of hanfu makeup styling, and to make the overall color of the styling present in the same tonal range.

Yang Yuan's store has about 400 sets of hanfu and hundreds of accessories of all kinds, most of which are specially purchased. She talked in detail about the dynasties, the groups dressed, the cultural background of the dynasties, and other aspects of each hanfu costume popular in the store, as if it were a treasure.

For hanfu makeup to finally have a good presentation, the most important thing is the match between makeup and clothing. "In fact, the most important thing in hanfu makeup is the details, such as the Tang dynasty makeup is strong and bright, like the Mianye, Huadian, eyebrow shape up to about 40 kinds, and different eyebrow shape can also express different mood changes. With so many styles of eyebrow shapes, it takes constant practice to draw the essence." Yang Yuan said.

Qin and Han dynasties popular Quju; Tang dynasty popular Qixiong Shanqun; Song dynasty popular Song pants, Baidie skirt, when customers enter the store to choose a set of hanfu, Yang Yuan will introduce them to different hanfu costumes.

Occasionally for a customer to propose to try to mix and match styles, she will use her professional knowledge to briefly explain the cultural background of this hanfu costume, in order to keep the traditional culture intact, she will remind customers to match the makeup, hair, and accessories that are popular in the corresponding period according to the dynasty in which the costume is worn.

Finding inspiration for hanfu makeup in history and culture

Always doing a fixed hanfu makeup making has made Yang Yuan fall into a professional bottleneck. In order to make herself innovative in hanfu making, she chooses to spend more time to precipitate her cultural heritage and learn new knowledge. The cost and time spent on learning was also doubled for her compared to the rewards her career brought her.

Most Hanfu stylists need to learn multiple courses including makeup details, jewelry making, grooming etiquette, history and culture.

"Because when I first started doing hanfu makeup making, I didn't learn systematically, but I kept gaining experience through practice." Yang Yuan said, "Compared to modern hanfu makeup making, the restoration class of hanfu makeup making is more stringent for details, requiring us practitioners to have the historical knowledge to do support and follow the laws of history and culture."

Yang Yuan's team has restored many traditional hanfu makeups together, including Yongle Palace murals, Court Ladies Adorning Their Hair With Flowers, and Tang figurines at the Xi'an Museum.

The most restored hanfu makeup is derived from the figurines and murals of ancient time. Because the figures in these excavations are historically based, the restoration of these makeups should pay attention to the presentation of details and also follow the historical and cultural background.

Focus on the future development potential of the Hanfu industry

As early as 2019, hanfu makeup artists appeared as a new occupation on major recruitment platforms in China.

The job requirements for most hanfu makeup artists include: makeup skills, clothing matching, image design. Need to introduce hanfu culture to costume, design and create hanfu styling according to the customer's characteristics and customer requirements.

In addition, many recruiters also propose to master basic photography skills and editing video skills, and to assist photographers in their filming work.

For young people who want to engage in hanfu styling, Yang Yuan also gave advice that we should keep hobby and innovation, the most important thing is to have a deep cultural accumulation on how to make a style.

"As a practitioner of an emerging profession, I think it's important to stick to your original intention. I am concerned about the future development potential of the industry, and in the process of my entrepreneurship, I have also been feeling my way. Now also in continuous learning, especially see some unearthed costume artifacts, I will query a lot of related books and literature, to understand more knowledge of makeup making, after repeated research, combined with the characteristics of various types of costume jewelry to complete the makeup restoration." Yang Yuan said.

In the future, Yang Yuan and her team will also combine the characteristics of hanfu culture to create a systematic wedding service of hanfu elements such as clothes, makeup, etiquette, and photography.