The curtain has fallen on the China Fashion Week. Local brand Naersi wowed the audience with a special runway show at Beijing's National Aquatics Center on Sunday, marking the brand's 25th anniversary.

Models pulled off simple but elegant designs with slicked-back hairstyles, showing the confident and assertive looks of today's women in the workplace.

Blue hues dominated the runway. 

"The color palette centers around blue. Because there's a saying in Chinese that indigo blue is extracted from the indigo plant, but it is bluer than the plant it comes from. And for the brand's 25th anniversary, I felt the responsibility to top our previous achievements, to really push forward the concept of Designed in China," designer Xu Zhidong told CGTN.

Over the last nine days, more than 100 brands and organizations from home and abroad participated in the fashion event, presenting runway shows, fashion forums and young designer incubation plans.

Collections featuring traditional crafts, like embroidery and other ethnic and cultural elements, were major highlights of the event.

"It's great to see ethnic elements combined with the latest trends; East meets West. I feel proud being an ethnic minority fashion designer and making our voices heard on a larger stage," Ajianamu, a fashion designer who participated in this year's event, told CGTN.

Unlike the Spring 2021 fashion weeks from the big four, which offered a makeshift combination of in-person and digital presentations, this year's China Fashion Week took place as usual. 

The organizers said innovation and collaborations were key themes.

Zhang Winghui, chairman of the China Fashion Association, said China's fashion consumption market is the most embracing and most diverse.

"We welcome international designers and brands to come to China to do business and to collaborate on all levels. That's what we need most, especially during hard times like this," he said.

China Fashion Week was established in 1997 and has now grown into one of the most influential events in the industry.

The Autumn/Winter 2021/2022 edition is scheduled to be held next March.