Zhou Juan, nicknamed the peachick from Quzhou, is becoming a web celebrity through her unusual  fashion designs and livestreaming. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

Zhou Juan – nicknamed the peachick from Quzhou – is on the rise in the world of fashion.

She majored in fashion design in college, returning in July 2020 to her hometown of Quzhou – the prefecture-level city in East China's Zhejiang province – to start her fashion career.

Things got going when she began using the short-video sharing platform Douyin – an app known as TikTok in the West – with her best friend.  

At the time, Quzhou's Kecheng district launched a new round of village anchor training programs. Zhou jumped in and participated in the program and over the past year developed her livestreaming career, producing nearly 200 clips, on quirky items ranging from dresses made from cowpea – a kind of plant – to suits designed with peanuts.  

"I didn't even know what to say at the start," she said.  Zhou said that at the beginning no more than  10 people watched her clip.

But she took heart and undertook to learn from experienced web anchors in the district, so she could showcase her own wacky fashion designs, which incorporate rural plant designs into clothing.

"What looks simple during livestreaming actually requires a lot of thought," she said.

According to Zhou, it takes at least four to five hours to make one of her garments. She uses plastic film as the lining and base, to cut the garment in three dimensions according to the body shape. She then pastes it with glass glue and double-sided adhesive tape and using needle and thread sews on the leaves.  

Currently Zhou's Douyin account has grown in leaps and bounds and now she has 270,000 followers. At an event earlier this year, Zhou designed a "citrus dress" to help farmers sell more than 1,000 kilograms of citruses in half an hour during her livestreaming broadcast.  

Zhou is ambitious and hopeful about the future. "When I have more followers, I plan to do a special livestreaming of local agricultural products and I hope I can advertise my hometown," she added.