TRCT_26

Chapter 26: Twisted Gauze — For the first time, he felt that this face of his was so unfamiliar

Luo Mingxuan saying he'd produce the fabric Ji Qingzhou wanted within three days turned out, surprisingly, not to be an empty boast.

On the morning of the fourth day after he'd taken the design away, this guy swaggered up in his own Ford automobile, parking it at the mouth of the lane, then carried a bolt of silk-wrapped fabric from the car into the shop.

At that moment, Ji Qingzhou was in the middle of sewing the main label onto that goose-yellow qipao custom-made for Miss Fang.

The pattern on the main label had been designed that night after he'd come back from Zhabei.

Ji Qingzhou didn't trust his own handwriting, so he'd shamelessly begged Jie Yu'an to write him a running-cursive version of "Century," then designed the English version of the logo himself.

The cursive letters were deliberately designed to look quite sloppy, as if a wavy skirt hem were placed beneath the Chinese character version.

Above the Chinese characters was a small clothes hanger pattern with hooks curving on both sides.

The whole trademark looked like a small skirt with an elaborate pattern hanging beneath a clothes hanger.

The day after the trademark design was finished, Ji Qingzhou had Zhu Renqing take the design and materials on a trip to Zhabei, offering a price of five fen per piece to have the embroiderers there embroider them.

He ordered fifty in total, for a total price of two yuan five jiao.

This price was, to Ji Qingzhou, quite low indeed, he himself blushed even saying the price out loud.

He'd also communicated with Zhu Renqing in advance that if the women weren't willing to take the job at that rate, he could appropriately raise it by a fen or two.

Who would have guessed, those embroiderers didn't raise the price at all—in fact, two of them took on the entire job by themselves, even complaining that there wasn't enough work, only fifty pieces. The two of them rushed the work day and night, and finished embroidering in under three days.

So this morning, Zhu Renqing brought back those fifty finished embroidered trademarks.

The square main label was beige silk, with the small clothes hanger above in berry red, while the Chinese and English trademark below was in a deeper maple-leaf red.

To reflect the characteristic of Gu embroidery, "using the needle in place of the brush, using embroidery in place of painting," he had also designed a gradient blending effect where the two colors met.

The overall pattern was refined while carrying a touch of elegant charm, sure to be quite popular with the ladies.

Since the embroidery work was so smooth and meticulous, seemingly blending into one with the fabric itself, Ji Qingzhou was naturally even more careful when sewing it onto the qipao.

For attaching the trademark, he used berry-red sewing silk thread matching the clothes hanger pattern, with the stitch technique being the poplar-blossom stitch, commonly known as feather stitch, making sure to achieve both beauty and a smooth, flat fit with no foreign sensation, so the customer would wear it comfortably.

And just as he was halfway through sewing it on, Luo Mingxuan strode into the shop with a beaming smile, carrying a bolt of fabric in his arms, and lifted his chin in greeting toward Ji Qingzhou, who was sitting by the cutting table:

"Brother Qingzhou, I've brought you the thing you wanted. How about it, I kept my promise, didn't I, three days means three days!"

As soon as he finished speaking, without waiting for Ji Qingzhou to respond, he went ahead and untied the silk wrapping around the bolt of fabric himself, laying the newly dyed material out on the long table.

Ji Qingzhou wasn't annoyed at having his work interrupted, he too was quite curious to see how the finished fabric from Taiming Xiang Dyeworks had turned out.

So he set his sewing aside for the moment, stood up, and went to inspect the fabric Luo Mingxuan had brought.

The Luo family were Suzhou merchants, so naturally what Luo Mingxuan had brought was Suzhou-style silk gauze.

In Ji Qingzhou's original conception, the best choice for making Shi Xuanman's qipao would have been traditional Hangzhou cross-weave gauze.

Hangzhou gauze was light, breathable, soft, and flowing, its evenly spaced horizontal stripes, formed by the combination of plain weave and leno weave, naturally carried, once dyed and printed, a classical, hazy quality, like viewing a scene through a gauze-curtained window.

This matched the concept of the chinaberry blossom branches he had originally sketched through the window, making it without doubt the best choice for that qipao.

Of course, the three-thread leno plain gauze that Luo Mingxuan had brought was likewise fine-threaded, light, and soft, with a fabric texture not too different from Hangzhou gauze.

Although it fell a bit short of the half-concealed, hazy beauty he'd envisioned in his ideal fabric, the superb dyeing craftsmanship, which so faithfully reproduced the colors and pattern of his original drawing, made up for that slight shortfall.

——On a pale tea-colored base reminiscent of canvas, chinaberry blossom branches of varying shades were scattered in just the right arrangement, tiny clusters of white-and-purple flowers wove through the branches and leaves, appearing from a distance like mist or clouds, while up close the petals seemed to flutter delicately, vivid and full of charm, as if one could almost catch their faint fragrance.

Of course, looking closely, the colors of the pattern in the details, compared to the original drawing, did still show some slight color discrepancy, this was something hard to avoid with traditional dyeing methods, and Ji Qingzhou could accept that.

After all, with purely handmade screen printing, a separate screen had to be made for each individual color, making the workload considerably complex and massive.

So, to achieve this level of quality in a mere three days, Ji Qingzhou was already quite satisfied.

If Luo Mingxuan really gave him a custom price of twenty yuan per bolt, that would absolutely be charity work, pure, plain cost price...

"How many zhang is this bolt?" Ji Qingzhou asked while unrolling the fabric, giving it a simple inspection.

This was purely handwoven leno gauze, with such exquisite printing besides—if it weren't necessary, Ji Qingzhou would honestly be reluctant to cut into it, and would rather keep it stored away in a chest instead.

"Four zhang*. The three-thread leno gauze woven by Suzhou's mechanized weaving households is pretty much always this length."

*t/n; roughly 13.3 meters (about 43.7 feet).

Ji Qingzhou nodded, then suddenly thought of something and asked, "You all should also produce four-thread leno gauze, right?"

"We do have it, but that stuff is quite troublesome to weave, few people know how to weave it, and the price is rather steep too," Having grown up steeped in the family business since childhood, even though he rarely handled the family enterprise himself, Luo Mingxuan still knew quite a lot about the silk weaving industry.

"You want that kind? Then you'd need to place an order with us one or two months in advance, you can't just buy it through regular purchase."

Something stirred faintly in Ji Qingzhou's mind—naturally, he wanted it very much.

If he remembered correctly, four-thread leno gauze, also commonly known as Wu gauze, had already begun gradually declining as early as the Yuan and Ming dynasties due to its complicated, painstaking craftsmanship and the low efficiency of manual weaving. By the Republican era, with the massive influx of foreign cloth flooding the market, it had been lost outright, and it wasn't until nearly a century later that people researched and revived the technique.

To be honest, he was quite curious to see just how light and exquisite this four-thread leno gauze, whose tradition hadn't yet died out at this point in time, would be; even just buying some to keep stored at home as a collector's piece would be worthwhile.

But there was no rush for now. Once he had the money, he could just look up Luo Mingxuan to place an order for the fabric when he wanted it. For the moment, the priority was to hurry up and finish the backlog of custom orders piling up.

"I'm quite satisfied with the printing on this bolt. What price are you thinking of charging me?" Ji Qingzhou asked, returning to the topic.

"Eh, didn't we already agree on this before, you help me get a total makeover, and I give you this fabric for free!"

Luo Mingxuan was clearly the one losing out in the deal, yet he seemed almost afraid Ji Qingzhou might change his mind, hurriedly pulling out a set of clothes from the red silk backpack he'd brought, waving it in front of Ji Qingzhou: "Look, I've already borrowed the clothes for you. You said you wanted a dark-colored shirt, my brother didn't have one, so I specially asked a friend to lend me one!"

Seeing him keeping his word so faithfully and being so generous with his money besides, Ji Qingzhou instead felt a bit guilty.

He had previously agreed to give Luo Mingxuan a makeover, but in essence, it had really been so that he could sell the man clothes. With Luo Mingxuan being so generous and unconcerned about the cost, it really made him look like a greedy, unscrupulous merchant by comparison.

He thought it over for a moment, then said, "How about this instead, I'll still give you the fabric at cost price. We should keep things even between us, that's how business stays good in the long run. As for the makeover I promised you, I'll also do my best to help you with that."

"Then you can't half-ass it, you've at least got to get me to eighty percent of this guy's effect," Luo Mingxuan pointed at Zhu Renqing nearby.

Zhu Renqing was focused on practicing his stitching skills using scrap fabric from the shop. Hearing this, he turned and glanced at the flamboyant young master for a moment, then turned back around indifferently, continuing his practice.

Meanwhile, seeing that Ji Qingzhou wasn't responding, Luo Mingxuan changed his attitude, putting on a humble, pleading manner, pressing his palms together and begging:

"Please, Brother Qingzhou, in a couple days I have to go back to Suzhou for a wedding banquet. Those young masters I grew up with back home, the moment I go back they'll mock me for dressing like a country bumpkin. This time I'm determined to make them look at me anew, like a different man after three days apart!"

"Alright, alright, alright, let's get started then, don't waste my time," Ji Qingzhou had originally wanted to find some excuse to send Luo Mingxuan off first, to come back once he'd finished this current busy stretch.

But hearing now that the man was dead set on showing off in front of his old hometown friends, it wasn't really convenient to keep stalling. So he took the clothes Luo Mingxuan had borrowed, unfolded them to take a look, then tossed them back to him, saying, "Fine, go change into them in the back."

"Got it!" Luo Mingxuan agreed without the slightest hesitation, and immediately dashed into the back room with the clothes.

In about seven or eight minutes, he came out, having finished changing.

The dark brown twill shirt had a decent enough cut, and the size fit him well too, only the trousers were a bit short, though thankfully that didn't affect much.

Perhaps because he wasn't used to wearing suits, his whole bearing came across as awkward and self-conscious, his air rather countrified, like the foolish son of some landowning family.

Ji Qingzhou had him tuck the shirt hem into his waistband, reached over to help adjust the collar, undid two buttons, and loosened up some space around the waist, creating a line that felt refined yet touched with casualness.

Next, he had Luo Mingxuan sit down on a stool, while he himself went next door to borrow a comb, hair oil, and a razor.

Perhaps because the blow to his ego last time had been too great, Luo Mingxuan was quite obedient today, neither wearing his pretend-refined glasses nor slathering hair oil onto his hair.

He'd simply worn a green silk robe, and showed up looking neat and fresh, sporting that thick, helmet-like fringe hairstyle of his.

Although Ji Qingzhou wasn't a hairstylist, he often helped style models. Especially during his previous job, he frequently needed to give models guidance on styling and coordination on set, and so had picked up some experience and techniques from following those stylists around.

Especially when it came to styling male models, his hands moved both quickly and with professional skill.

Aside from his eyebrows, Luo Mingxuan's features actually had no obvious flaws, and could well be fully shown off without any reservations.

As for his face shape, it was close to a diamond shape, what was commonly called a pentagon face.

His forehead and chin were slightly narrow, his cheekbones slightly wide, if the hairstyle wasn't handled properly, it could make the lines of his face look rugged and uneven.

The secret to fixing this face shape lay in combing the hair up high at the crown, to soften the contours of the face, leaving an appropriate amount of hair on one or both sides of the forehead corners to cover the narrower part of the forehead, achieving the effect of filling out the temples.

So Luo Mingxuan's previous greasy middle part had basically been a perfect way to expose every flaw.

After examining the contours of Luo Mingxuan's face shape once more, Ji Qingzhou rubbed hair oil onto both his hands and the comb, and quickly styled the man's hair into a forty-sixty part.

To make the hair at the crown as voluminous and layered as possible, Ji Qingzhou combed nearly all of his hair upward and back, leaving only a small amount of fringe hanging down at the right forehead corner to cover that temple, while letting the left side of his face, whose contour line was comparatively smooth, show openly.

"Your left side is better-looking than your right. From now on, if you ever go to a photo studio to get your picture taken, you can turn your left side toward the camera."

"Like this?" Luo Mingxuan immediately twisted his left side toward him, only to find himself, at close range, meeting Ji Qingzhou's dark eyes, glinting beneath thick lashes.

His head gave a sudden "buzz," his body going somewhat numb, and he blurted out something playful on reflex to distract himself: "Then from now on I'll just talk to people all twisted like this, and if anyone asks, I'll just say I slept on my neck wrong."

"Don't tell people outside that you know me," Ji Qingzhou replied, unimpressed, turning to set down the comb, wiping the hair oil off his hands with a handkerchief, then picking up the razor.

Seeing him approach with the razor in hand, leaning down toward him, Luo Mingxuan grew even more nervous, muttering somewhat incoherently:

"I shaved before I left the house, don't tell me stubble's already grown back? You don't really look like the type who grows a beard, do you even know how to shave? Maybe I should just do it myself instead?"

Ji Qingzhou paid him no attention at all, first pressing down on his shoulder and saying "Don't move," then pinching his chin, focusing intently as he began trimming his eyebrows.

This time, Luo Mingxuan really couldn't make a sound at all.

The few fingers pinching his chin felt like they were pressing down the Five-Finger Mountain over his whole body; whether out of nervousness or eagerness he couldn't tell, but his breathing grew increasingly rapid, his eyes darting nimbly back and forth, just not daring to look at Ji Qingzhou's eyes.

Ji Qingzhou, for his part, didn't notice the change in his mood at all, his mind set only on finishing this task quickly.

Luo Mingxuan's eyebrows were naturally arched too high, thick and dark, looking like two small mountains pressing down over his eyes, both fierce and somewhat comical at once.

So Ji Qingzhou shaved them down a touch flatter, trimming them into well-proportioned sword brows.

After spending two or three minutes carefully trimming the eyebrows, he wiped away the loose hair from the man's face with a cloth. With that, the makeover of Luo Mingxuan's appearance was basically complete, with only the final step remaining.

Ji Qingzhou drew some water into the basin and washed his hands, then took the still-unfinished leather jacket down from the male mannequin stand, handing it to Luo Mingxuan, "Try putting this on."

"What kind of clothing is this, leather? You can even make clothes out of leather? This idea of yours is really something new..."

The moment he was out of Ji Qingzhou's close gaze, Luo Mingxuan's whole body relaxed, muttering away to himself while swinging the jacket smartly over his shoulders and putting it on.

He then strode over to the dressing mirror, examining the results of his makeover with a touch of curiosity.

His hands were still adjusting the jacket when his eyes focused properly, and he found himself face to face in the mirror with a tall, imposing, strikingly handsome man, leaving him utterly stunned.

"Wait, this is—!" Luo Mingxuan abruptly leaned in close to the mirror, scrutinizing the man reflected within.

Having lived twenty years, this was the first time he felt this face of his was so unfamiliar.

This was just too unbelievable, hadn't he always had a monkey face?

Just by changing his hair and trimming his eyebrows a bit, how had his appearance turned into something so sharp-looking, bold, and dashingly charming?

He couldn't help but feel as if he were dreaming, pinching his own face hard, and immediately afterward letting out a howl: "It's really me!"

Luo Mingxuan rubbed his cheeks, turned to face Ji Qingzhou, and after a three-second build-up, suddenly clasped his hands together with a moved expression: "Brother Qingzhou, I hereby declare, from this day on, you are the parents who gave me a second life!"

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