Innovative Application and Design of Smocking Technology in Local Chinese Clothing Brands

Domestic and international research on smocking craft mainly discusses the pleat structure, as well as the principle, craftsmanship, and the integration of new technologies. For example, the impact of the history and production methods of pleating techniques on garment structural design has been explored [3] (Li, 2023). The principles behind the formation of pleats through reduction, addition, and accumulation have been analyzed, as well as their extended application in design through real case studies, applying pleating to dresses and the collars, shoulders, and chests of tops [4]. Starting from the flat structure of women’s skirt pleats, the source of pleats, types of pleats, and their adaptability to design locations were discussed, along with the craftsmanship and fabric characteristics, to refine the implementation elements of pleating in women’s skirts, providing guidance for the perfect presentation of pleats [5]. The importance of three-dimensional pleating design methods in the garment design process was demonstrated, with computer animation technology applied in the design process of three-dimensional pleated garment patterns. Based on the method of geometric pleat analysis, the design and three-dimensional analysis of pleated patterns were achieved, realizing the goal of three-dimensional pleated garments [6].

Despite the widespread discussion of pleat application in garment design, from enhancing the aesthetics of the fabric and improving garment structure design, to introducing advanced technology to improve design precision, those studies have provided a rich knowledge base and inspiration for the field of garment design. However, how to closely integrate these technologies with the development of local clothing brands, especially in finding a balance between traditional craftsmanship and modern design innovation, remains an area for exploration. This paper aims to fill this gap by deeply analyzing the smocking craft, a traditional handicraft with potential innovative capabilities, to explore its practical application in local brands and its new value and possibilities in contemporary garment design. It seeks to promote the innovative development of the smocking craft from both theoretical and practical perspectives, injecting new vitality and inspiration into local clothing brands.

As one of the birthplaces of world civilization, China has thousands of years of history and culture. It is not only an ‘exclusive’ inspiration library for Chinese designers, but it also gives local Chinese fashion design brands the confidence to step overseas. A rapid change in the national clothing style occured after the reform and opening up, and the development of modern clothing started late compared with developed countries. Since the 1990s, domestic designers have gradually paid attention to the importance of the continuity of Chinese clothing culture, rather than blindly follow international fashion.

When local brands, including JNBY, Bosideng, LiNing China, Shangguan Zhe, XanderZhou and Chinese designers expand into overseas markets and successively appear in the four major international fashion weeks, local brand clothing in China has become the vane of globalization and calls for strong purchasing power. While completing the transformation from a brand to a group, the Chinese brand ICICLE provides Chinese consumers with more desirable fashion products, uses more metaphysical carving methods to emphasize the oriental artistic conception, and integrates Chinese aesthetic conception with western fashion tailoring through modern aesthetics. The autumn and winter Dunhuang series of DAZZLE 2021 transforms oriental aesthetics into a design style with heritage and culture, changes the old-fashioned atmosphere in the public stereotype, and has more connections with the trendy life that young people love, so that more people can understand and live in a more modern way and accept indigenous culture.

With the sudden emergence of local brands, it is not difficult to find that Chinese people’s aesthetic development in local brand clothing is no longer limited to the accumulation of traditional elements and symbols, let alone the output of traditional thoughts - ‘directly brought’; there is a spirit of abstraction, artistic conception and humanistic thinking. Therefore, on the basis of absorbing and learning from foreign smocking crafts, the local clothing brands in China carry out innovative designs with Chinese characteristics, combined with their own style traits, so as to create smocking crafts with Chinese characteristics in the process of integrated development and continuous innovation. In turn, domestic and foreign clothing markets can be better expanded and developed.

In the early stages, this paper employed the literature review approach, extensively reading and collecting documents related to smocking techniques, tracing the origins and development of smocking, understanding the types of craftsmanship involved, and noting that there are few cases in the literature that combine smocking techniques with local brands from a theoretical perspective. This laid the foundation for this research and indicated the direction of the study.

Building on the literature review, further image analysis was conducted to systematically organize and summarize the types of smocking techniques. Through in-depth interpretation of image content, combining images with text to study the needle techniques of smocking, and meticulously examining diagrams of smocking stitches, instructions for operations, and images of finished products, this method allows for a more intuitive understanding of the characteristics of smocking needle techniques.

By extensively searching for brand cases that apply pleating, this article analyzes the specific manifestations of smocking techniques on common parts of garments, discovering that smocking not only achieves functionality that conforms to the human body’s curves but also creates certain decorative effects visually. This provides inspiration and ideas for further analysis of the innovative use of smocking techniques in local brands.

The smocking process belongs to the transformation methods of clothing fabrics; that is, the pleating process is performed on flat fabric from a part or the whole. Usually, after the smocking process, the fabric can be flexibly processed in combination with the corresponding seaming method and arrangement, and the texture effect presented has a certain artistic quality, which fully reflects its decorative function.

In the early days, smocking technology paid more attention to functionality. In the 5th century, farmers’ working clothes in the UK began to use smocking technology, and the originally loose and bulky shirts were tightened at the yoke and cuffs by hand-sewing, so that the farmers’ limbs could move freely in the process of their work, so it is highly functional when worn. See Figure 1(a).

Fig.1

When it came to the Victorian era, people gradually applied this technology to young girls’ clothing, and smocking technology began its decorative development of clothing. It can be seen that in the national costumes of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and other countries, smocking technology is also frequently used as a decorative craft [7], which not only retains the characteristics of the craft, but also integrates the local ethnic customs, and has a certain decorative beauty. See Figure 1(b).

In the early stage, smocking technology was mainly done by hand. In the 1880s, due to the emergence of dot transfer advertisements, the method of transferring heat transfer paper to the back of the fabric and then hiding it after sewing, production time, to a certain extent, was saved, which laid the foundation for the industrialization of smocking. In the 1950s, manufacturers Read and Amanda Jane provided pleating machines [8]. The appearance of the machine greatly liberated manual labor, making smocking technology gradually move towards the mass market, and it began to be widely used in clothing.

Like the loose shape of ancient Chinese wide sleeves, the natural folds were caused by people’s activities when wearing them, which mainly appeared in the form of hanging and wrapping natural folds [9]; but the formation did not shrink the fabric through stitching into pleats. At the beginning of the 19th century, smocking craftsmanship began to be introduced into China. In order to achieve localization, Shanghai’s embroidered clothes combined Chinese and foreign traditional embroidery techniques, integrating techniques such as smocking, silk drawing, trocar and Kesi. As a result, in the 1980s, this sort of clothing developed rapidly in China [10].

As smocking crafts are influenced by the introduction of culture and technology from different regions, research on needling methods presents a variety of craft types. According to different stitching methods, smocking can be divided into three types: direct smocking, kneading smocking, and combined smocking. Different types of smocking have different fabric texture effects.

4.2.2.

Kneading smocking

Kneading smocking is the earliest and most common. In order to modify the curve of the female body, it is often used on the chest, waist, cuffs and other parts. The kneading smocking is sewn on the front or back of the cloth by hand kneading, and the intersection point of the two layers of the fabric is selected to sew according to the pattern designed [14], so that the fabric presents an effect similar to pleat peaks, see Figure 2, and is usually used in in striped and plaid fabrics. If you choose a solid color fabric, you need to sew on the basis of the marked points.

Fig. 2.

In BAN XIAOXUE 2021 spring and summer clothing, Chinese designer Ban Xiaoxue applied kneading smocking technology to the waist, as shown in Figure 5, which is both functional and decorative, enhancing the beauty of the clothing.

4.2.3.

Combined smocking

Combined smocking is based on direct smocking and kneading smocking for the decoration of accessories. Smocking technology itself is a process of shaping the texture of fabrics, combined with the addition of thread embroidery, three-dimensional flowers, beads, sequins and other accessories [15]. Embellishing it, see Figure 3, can make smocking more layered and richer in visual texture and tactile texture.

Fig. 3

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Fig. 5

In the Marchen 2021 spring and summer series, Chinese designer Chen Mei added beading on the basis of direct smocking for embellishment, as is shown in Figure 6, which responds to the black skirt, demonstrating a smart girl with a little dark style and an eclectic sense of personality.

Fig. 6

The smocking craft usually appears in the style of trousers, skirts and tops in the overall shaping [16]. In the design of local brands, the form of smocking technology is divided into single pleat repeated application (see Figure 7) and pleat split application (see Figure 8). Single repeated use refers to the use of the same smocking technique in the overall shaping of the clothing according to the design requirements, which has certain regularity in the visual expression effect. Split-type smocking needs to design the overall shaping of the garment in advance from the combination method and division ratio, fully considering the expression form of smocking craftsmanship in the whole garment. Clothes made by smocking technology as a whole can improve the wearer’s comfort; but since smocking technology occupies a larger area, the time and difficulty of the manufacturing process will increase.

Fig. 7

Fig. 8

As a partial embellishment, the smocking craft often appears on the chest, waist, cuffs, collar and other parts [17] so as to fit the curve shape of the human body, and combines function and decoration. Due to the quantity difference between the chest and waist, the chest is relatively restricted in the anatomy of the human body. As one of the key visual attention parts, the reasonable use of kneading smocking on the chest can increase the texture of the fabric and the layering of the clothing, and show the plump breast curve of women [18], see Figure 9. As the wrist is not affected by the human body to a large extent, applying the direct smocking process to the cuffs can achieve the purpose of tightening, which combines both the functional and decorative, as is shown in Figure 10. Applying this technology in the design of the collar can artistically embellish the neck line, see Figure 11. Hangpai women’s wear brand HOPE SHOW also uses direct smocking technology on the skirts of the spring and summer of 2020 (see Figure 12) to highlight the key points of the design. In the e-commerce brand ICY2020, direct smocking technology is used on the dropped shoulders and the design modifies the shape of arms, as shown in Figure 13. Integrated smocking technology is applied to the waist to tighten it, as is shown in Figure 14, and accessories such as beads, sequins, and three-dimensional flowers are used to decorate the smocking to broaden the contrast. According to the design needs, the space of the waist can also be designed by changing the combined structure of smocking.

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Fig. 11

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Fig. 13.

Fig. 14