Threads of the Miao : towards a future of regalia, identity and cultural continuity

This thesis explores Miao garment making as a living system of practice in Xijiang Miao Village in Guizhou, China. For the Miao people, garments have long served as a primary means of recording history, beliefs, and social relationships through practices of weaving, dyeing, embroidery, and silversmithing, as well as through wearing and inheritance. These practices were traditionally supported by domestic and communal spatial arrangements that allowed knowledge to be learned through proximity, repetition, and shared time. Contemporary patterns of migration, tourism, and rural transformation have altered these conditions and weakened intergenerational transmission, while institutional frameworks of museum display, intangible cultural heritage designation, and tourism have expanded the visibility of the practice without sustaining the embodied conditions through which it continues. In response, the project develops a speculative narrative set in 2075 that imagines a community-led apprenticeship residency in Xijiang Miao Village, organized around the Miao agricultural calendar and the sequential processes of garment-making. Through this narrative framework, the thesis examines how cultural continuity might be sustained through embodied learning, collective participation, and shared knowledge, proposing the Miao garment not as a preserved artifact but as a living practice carried forward across generations.