Wedding gown designer

Tang Zhiru

But for every stitch she knits, the 33-year-old wedding gown designer and tailor — or southern Chinese style qungua designer and tailor, to be more exact — is weaving a fairytale life of her own.

The centuries-old traditional longfengqungua (wedding costumes with dragons and phoenixes) was said to be first given as a gift by an emperor to one of his favorite ministers for his daughter's wedding ceremony.

Special permission had been granted to the daughter to wear a dragon and phoenix illustration, which were previously exclusive to the imperial family.

But the costume — consisting of a long skirt or qun, and a jacket or gua — gained popularity in Guangdong province, the hometown of the minister, which then spread all over China.

The tradition of wearing the qungua has been revived especially over the past decade, helped in part by the return of emigrants and by their wide use by celebrities in Hong Kong.

Tang, a native of Guangdong, has made her fortune through what she calls "taking advantage of an old trick in a new era".

The daughter of a veteran qungua embroiderer, Tang has been dreaming about starting her own qungua studio since watching her mother "magically produce flying dragons" as a child.

But things only really picked up in 2006, with the creation of Taobao, the online shopping bazaar.

Until then her business was mainly reliant on word of mouth.

But since the start of the online retail revolution, "everyone wants to wear a qungua in China", she said, and interest has spread around the world.

And with the advent of Weibo, on which photos of blushing brides smiling sweetly can be published, business has soared at her XiaoruQungua Studio.

"Now I have to limit the number of costumes produced," said Tang, who employs about 50 embroiderers, most older than 50, who can make a maximum of 150 costumes a year, with the most delicate, dubbed the guahuang, or the king of gua, taking three months to make.

A guahuang, with at least 80 percent of the space of the dress covered by embroidery, is priced at around 50,000 yuan (US$8,000), while the simplest designs cost 6,000 yuan.

"Many don't want to do this job. Making qungua is an art, and it's been undervalued," said Tang, who, together with her team, now runs a multimillion-yuan business.

It is thought there are less than 30 embroiderers in China younger than 30, who have the skills needed to design a traditional qungua.

It takes about 300 stages, from drawing a sketch to the final ironing, to complete a qungua, according to Tang, the majority of which is done by hand.

"It's different from machine work. A hand-embroidered phoenix, for example, is 3-D and should look as if there is a real one wrapped around the body of the bride," said Tang.

Her biggest worry is finding embroiderers. "It's much too painstaking a job for many. One has to sit there embroidering for 12 hours a day — poor eyesight and shoulder pain come with the territory."