Since 2000, the veteran designer has held fashion shows every year featuring Chinese landscapes and ethnic culture. For instance, "The Soul of the Nations" collection expressed the splendid and varied styles of 56 minorities, while "Royal Flavor" showed off the luxury of the imperial court.

A clean look dominated fashion week.

"The beauty of nature has a strong power attracting people to protect it," Cheung said.

The veteran's fascination with nature could be seen in the lavish use of symmetry, bias cutting, carving lace-trimming and beading in his designs.

China Fashion Week's unprecedented emphasis on environmental protection won approval from foreign fashion professionals.

"Since China is the biggest clothing manufacturer and exporting country in the world, it has great significance to enhance environmental awareness in the fashion industry here," said Jean-Pierre Mocho, the head of the French Ready-to-Wear Federation.

According to Mocho, the French Ready-to-Wear Federation will help Chinese clothing manufacturers and designers to implement environmental protection activities through making "green" designs, choosing regenerative fabrics, improving processing, especially dying techniques and promoting ecological fashion products.

AsahiKASEI Corporation, the leading Japanese company in textile and chemistry, will support promising Chinese designers by providing them with high-tech ecological fabrics.

Through introducing environmental-friendly fabrics and advanced processing techniques to Chinese designers, the corporation hope that the China fashion industry will gradually enhance its environmental awareness and make more efforts to protect nature.

(China Daily November 12, 2008)