Seamless Storytelling

This was the setting of Richard Wagner’s 19th century opera Lohengrin – a story based in medieval German legend – at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City staged on February 26, 2023.　

Directed by the French-Canadian director François Girard, the new production reimagines the original 10th century Antwerp setting into a sci-ff scenario. Theatergoers were captivated by the abstract, otherworldly aesthetic of Tim Yip, the world-renowned costume designer, art director and visual artist.　

Yip designed nearly 300 costumes for over 200 performers in the opera. Each performer wore a gray silk hooded cape, with layers of green, red or white inside symbolizing the story’s different factions.　

Yip is perhaps best known for his costume and set design in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), making him the first Chinese person to win an Oscar for Best Art Direction and a British Film and Television Academy Award (BAFTA) for Best Costume Design in 2001.　

In his nearly four-decade career, Yip has displayed creative versatility across fields from film, theater and ballet to photography, sculpture, installations and multimedia art. He designed China’s costumes for the Olympic handover ceremony performance to Beijing at the 2004 Athens Games, as well as Team China’s podium uniforms for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.　

Since 2001, Yip has published numerous essays on film, art and aesthetics, alongside collections of fiction, photography and exhibition catalogs. This July, he released two new books, Autobiography, and Aesthetics, a collection of essays exploring his most recent thoughts on aesthetics. Both books are only published in Chinese.　

Yip’s work blends East and West, ancient and modern, and realms of time and space, conjuring one unique world after another.

Born in Hong Kong, Yip developed a passion for visual art at a young age. His love for drawing was initially sparked by his older brother, who was skilled in drawing and photography and eventually became a professional photographer.　

A natural artist, Yip felt a strong urge to create imaginative worlds that blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy. He began drawing cartoons in preschool, often personifying his toys with their own personalities, and inventing stories for them.　

In middle school, Yip started drawing graphic stories about his classmates. Here, he could freely invent, express his feelings and explore his imagination.　

“I found immense joy in creating this imagined world, where I humanized objects as well as objectified humans. I absorbed the true, good and beautiful aspects of the physical world, then created an invisible yet wonderful realm, where I could wander freely between reality and fiction, enjoying the blurred line,” Yip wrote in Autobiography.　

In his teens, Yip began learning photography from his brother and experimented with portrait photography. In 1982, he enrolled at Hong Kong Polytechnic University as one of the school’s earliest photography students.　

While still in school, Yip joined director John Woo’s production A Better Tomorrow (1986) as executive art director, marking his entry to the film industry. Starring Ti Lung, Chow YunFat and Leslie Cheung, the landmark crime film is a defining work of Hong Kong action cinema.　

The 1980s and 1990s was a golden age for Hong Kong cinema that saw a surge of talent. Critics dubbed the era “Hong Kong New Wave,” which lasted more than two decades.　

Yip was embedded in this cultural movement, which deeply influenced pop culture on the Chinese mainland. “It may seem like a very special time looking back, but as someone in it, I didn’t have that special feeling,” he said.　

One of Yip’s notable projects during this period was costume design for Leslie Cheung in Rouge (1987), a romantic drama by director Stanley Kwan set in the 1930s. Yip described the late Cheung as a natural actor. The long black gown Yip designed for Cheung’s character conveyed the playboy’s persona – “mild, delicate, yet flamboyant and decadent,” he said.　

“I met with Leslie Cheung almost every day back then. These daily encounters didn’t make me feel any more special. No star today compares to [those actors]. No star can be as special, charismatic and characteristic as they were,” Yip added.

“Each character’s outfit conveyed something Ang Lee wanted to communicate to the audience,” Yip said. “From how a character may feel comfortable in one context and uneasy in another, costume designers can handle such subtlety with costume changes in a very natural and subtle way,” Yip said.　

In some films, costumes lie at the heart of the story’s tension. Yip designed costumes for The Message (2009), an espionage thriller set in Japanese-occupied Nanjing. Costumes for the two female leads – A-listers Li Bingbing and Zhou Xun – play a symbolic role in what Yip calls their evolving “mutual suspicions.” He created three sets of costumes for them: military uniforms, cheongsam and lace lingerie, each revealing subtleties in their complex interactions.　

“In the scene where everyone suspects each other’s identity, I aimed to create a sense of security,” Yip said. “When Chen Kuo-fu (the film’s co-director) invited me to join the project, one scene immediately came to mind: a woman takes off her cheongsam, revealing loose threads, and another woman mends it. Beneath the dress she’s wearing lace lingerie. It’s a delicate and nuanced moment, a private space shared by two beautiful women.”　

“[Li Bingbing] wears a green cheongsam, while [Zhou Xun] wears a red-brown one. Their dresses are simple, without any fancy patterns, giving them a serene, elegant and timeless quality. The harmony in their outfits suggests to the audience that these two women are like a pair, and a subtle, intimate bond forms between them,” he added.　

When talking about his landmark work, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Yip shared how designing costumes for the protagonist, Li Mubai (played by Chow Yun-fat), transformed his approach to costume design. In the film, Li Mubai is a swordsman of Wudang, a Taoist sect whose martial philosophy embodies patience and discipline.　

“Ang Lee infused Li Mubai with many of his own subjective world views and values,” Yip said. “The entire story unfolds from Li’s perspective, allowing the audience to perceive the events through his eyes. When designing Li’s costumes, I adopted a new method I had never used before, which I call ‘the disappearance of the protagonist.’”　

Yip gives Li Mubai a simple, consistent look: a grayish-white long gown with modern details. He said this enhanced the “alienation effect,” referring to a concept first coined by playwright Berthold Brecht in his 1936 essay about Chinese acting, where actors perform in such a way that “the audience is hindered from simply identifying itself with the character.”　

“You can see there’s almost no change in his costumes. Throughout the film, Li wears the same long gown, with only slight variances in fabric,” Yip said. “If his costumes were designed in a meticulous, realistic way, then the air of mystery that surrounds him would be lost.”

Directed by Law Cheuk-yiu and set in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), Temptation of a Monk follows Jing-yi (Wu Hsingkuo), a monk with a troubled past, who falls in love with Qing Shou (Chen Chong), a nun – and secret assassin sent to kill him.　

For Qing Shou’s costumes, Yip combined Tang styles with Victorian fashions. The film’s sets and costumes also drew from the surrealism of German artist Max Ernst and traditional Chinese mythology. He used vivid, symbolic colors like Gustav Klimt’s gold – a hue he associated with decadence, splendor and death.　

For Medea, a Peking Opera adaptation of the Greek tragedy directed by Wu Hsing-kuo and set in the ancient Loulan Kingdom along the Silk Road, Yip made bold choices. He created an enormous dress for Medea, blending Renaissance styles with traditional Chinese long sleeves. He added two giant bamboo poles to the waistline, which would extend up to five meters wide when Medea’s fury reached its peak, visually representing her intense wrath.　

Yip’s surrealistic designs challenged Peking Opera costume. “My costumes were considered unorthodox and eccentric at the time,” he said.　

“When Peking Opera actors wore them, they had to rethink their performances to fit both traditional opera and these unconventional costumes. This contrast led to lots of unexpected artistic effects on stage.”　

In 1996, Yip was invited to design costumes for Rashomon at Austria’s Bühnen Graz Opera House – his first international theater project. Directed by Taiwanese choreographer Lin HwaiMin, the opera adapted Japanese author Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s classic short story from 1915 about scruples and survival in feudal Kyoto.　

Yip merged Japanese Noh theater styles and Kabuki-inspired makeup with medieval European court fashion. “The fusion of classical Japanese clothing with European court styles made everything so natural and convincing,” Yip explained.　

Since then, Yip has been a prominent figure in the international theater scene, collaborating with celebrated artists like British choreographer Akram Khan, American director Robert Wilson, Italian-born Belgian director Franco Dragone, and director François Girard.　

“I shed narrow nationalistic views, embrace all kinds of culture, absorb as much as I can and then return to my roots,” Yip writes in Autobiography. “This way, I’ve developed brand new understanding and creative attitudes toward Chinese culture and other cultural systems worldwide.”　

His experiences have shaped his concept of New Orientalism – a vision that illuminates Chinese history and culture.　

In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, he created a poetic martial arts world set in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). For Feng Xiaogang’s The Banquet (2016), Yip designed a Hamlet-inspired palace in 10th century China, and recreated grand battles from the Three Kingdoms period (220-280) for John Woo’s war epic Red Cliff (2008). Most recently, in Creation of the Gods Ⅰ: Kingdom of Storms (2023), he crafted a visually stunning world of mythology and fantasy set in the Bronze-Age Shang Dynasty (1600- 1046 BCE).　

For Yip, New Orientalism is about “opening a door” to explore Eastern traditions. “This concept shouldn’t be defined by the West,” he asserted in Aesthetics. “We need to reclaim the narrative definition and define ourselves.”　

Yip argues that China’s enduring culture provides endless inspiration for creating a contemporary culture of global significance.　

“My understanding of New Orientalism is about evolving from our traditions and turning the past tense to the present tense,” he said.