Expat Choice Guide Celebrating 10 Years (2016–2026) | Empress for a Day: A Hanfu Photo Shoot at Dressed Up Dreams

Expat Choice Reporter, Joanne Flinn explore a studio that turns heritage fashion into cinematic portraiture in full Chinese Empress style. Dressed Up Dreams offers a Hanfu photo shoot experience. This is not a standard photo shoot where you smile and collect your prints. This heritage aesthetic and heritage fashion, captured through cinematic portrait photography. Founder Sharon Ling’s theatre background shows. Each shoot is staged, layered, intentional and immersive.

What I hadn't expected was how collaborative and co-creative the whole process would be.

Cinematic. Heritage. Fashion.

It begins before you arrive. An enquiry about hair colour, height, body shape. At first it seemed unusual for a photo shoot. But walking into the studio and seeing the sheer vaariety of outfits from different periods of Chinese history, for men and women, in colour combinations, it made sense. My artist's eye widen, I understood. Sharon had been using those details to shortlist what might suit me. She'd already pulled a Tang Dynasty period piece.

Sidebar: The Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD) is one of the great cultural high points of Chinese civilisation. It’s a golden age of art, poetry and fashion, with an extraordinary range of makeup styles, hair designs and adornment. If you want to fall down that particular rabbit hole, Nüwa Hanfu's deep dive is worth your evening: nuwahanfu.com/blogs/news/a-deep-dive-into-tang-dynasty-fashion-makeup. I certainly did.

The makeup came first. And this is where I need to slow down, because what Sharon’s make-up artist did to my face was essentially painting. Cleaning, foundation, colour toning — she worked with such a variety of tonal pieces that my skin became a palette. Layers of Tang-style eyeliner shaped to my eyes. A conversation about which eyebrow look to choose, which was more fun than it sounds. And of course, because this is Chinese formal dress, the proper red lipstick. What fascinated me afterwards was reading about the historical range of Tang beauty. From styles that made you look flushed from too much wine (the aptly named "drunken makeup"), to decorative beauty spots called huadian, originally designed to cover pox marks, that became fashion statements in their own right.

While the make-up artist painted my face, Sharon was simultaneously building my hair. And I mean building. She'd sourced hairpieces from China, extensions close to a metre long each, and layered on what I think was five or six pieces, mixing colour tones to work with my silver platinum hair. The Tang Dynasty style she chose was deliberately asymmetrical. Not balanced. Lopsided. She built up probably six inches of volume on the right side of my head to create a sense of drama and sweep. Just glorious.

Then the dressing. And here is where the Booth Aster, artist, in me truly lost herself.

The Tang Dynasty silhouette is loose and flowing. No corsets, no constraint. The design principle was this: when you are wealthy, how much beautiful fabric can you show off? Because fabric, in those days, was handmade and extraordinarily expensive. So there were layers. Acres of layers.

First, a yellow low-relief brocade under-dress, daxiushan (大袖衫) literally "big sleeve shirt." Those dramatically long, flowing sleeves that drop from the shoulder to the knees. Then a burnt red dress layer with embroidered flowers and leaves across the bustline, wrapped and tied above the bosom. This with a massive, flowing skirt and top that pooled two feet around my feet. The kind of span that, pulled taut, would stretch almost the full span of your arms. Then a front panel in a fine silk effect, cream with a rust border, printed with peonies and cherry blossoms in deep cream, blue and light blue. Then a blue chiffon layer with its own floral embellishments. And finally, a deep mustard yellow scarf that provided tonal warmth against the lemon of the underskirt. Every piece, in the old days, would have been hand done. The colour hand-placed, the embroidery a significant undertaking on its own. The sleeves scooped close to a metre each side.

And then. The bling.

Imagine you are an empress of China and you have the jewellery box. They had never heard of Chanel's principle of putting everything on and taking at least one piece off. In the Tang Dynasty, the whole point of having bling was to show the bling. By my count, roughly seventeen pieces went in, combs, pins, dangles, earrings, tiny pointed ornaments. All following the hair's asymmetry rather than fighting it. The colour tones Sharon selected picked up turquoise to match the blues in the fabric and bring out my eyes, with red accents alongside. Magnificent.

As an adult, this was the grown-up version of playing dress-up in your mother's best outfits. Except I wasn't going to get in trouble. I was going to get fabulous photographs.

The shoot itself was staged against a deep grey background chosen so my hair colour and the rich fabrics would stand out. Sharon directed with a theatre eye. Postures with the formal Tang Dynasty fan, held just so for elegance and command. Postures without it. Graciously receiving. Commanding. And then, in a moment I will treasure, a high-speed cinematic capture of me playing a lute. Let me be clear: I did not play the lute as such. But I have the photograph, and in it, I am absolutely playing the lute.

Beyond the Tang pieces, the studio holds gorgeous outfits from later periods of Chinese history, beautifully embroidered garments, and men's formal jackets in creams, reds, blues and blacks. There is range here for anyone's imagination.

From the shoot, a long list of around thirty photographs — the best of each position and pose — from which you select four to be retouched as your final cinematic portraits. One of which is the hero image in this article.

The whole experience ran close to four hours. Preparation, dressing, shooting. Each phase its own act in what felt like a private production. Sharon's theatre training means nothing is rushed and nothing is accidental. It is, in every sense, an experience rather than a photo shoot.

Imagine yourself as empress for a day. With a lute!