Styles from the Steppes: California Steppes Photoshoot (Tara)
Nav: Photoshoot Duo/Esther/Tara // Shoot & Styling Background // Macaron Design Background // Ferghana Design Background
Pt. 3 of our AAPI series: Meet Tara, our model for the Ferghana set! 🐎
Another Bay Area native also born in the Year of the Horse, Tara is of Persian & Han-Taiwanese heritage and studies fashion in San Francisco. She enjoys pilates, yoga, sewing, and ice hockey, and is a member of the ice crew for the San Jose Sharks! We chose Tara for this look because her heritage beautifully reflects the cultural exchange between Central Asia and China — almost like the Silk Road embodied in one person.
The Ferghana set is named after the namesake legendary horses of the Fergana Valley, known in premodern China as “heavenly horses” and famed for their speed and stamina. Its Chinese title, 君馬黃, comes from a Tang dynasty poem about friendship despite differences in origin & background — a fitting phrase for both the multi-ethnic Tang world and our AAPI Month theme of diaspora. 🐴
The robe itself is inspired by a Northern Dynasty predecessor of the Tang round-collared robe: a high-collared, narrow-sleeved silhouette suited for the cold winds of the steppes and introduced to the Central Plains by the horse-riding Xianbei peoples. The print features a linked-bead pattern with confronted horses inside pearl roundels, a motif associated with Persian, Byzantine, Greco-Bactrian, and Central Asian art that became popular in medieval China through trade, migration, and cultural exchange.
For styling, we brought this East / West remix into California: blue jeans tied to San Francisco’s Gold Rush history, red cowboy boots, and our cowboy-weimao hybrid — a red cowboy hat reimagined with the veil of a Tang-style 帷帽 riding hat. Tara’s makeup draws from historical recreations of Tuoba Xianbei styling seen in cave murals and figurines, including the red forehead mark, while her braids are another nod to the long history of braided hairstyles among many nomadic steppe peoples.
As we close out AAPI Month, we’re honoring identity as something layered, diasporic, and always in motion. 🐎
CREDITS
Model: Esther Sue (ig: @/esthers_ue)
Hair: 糖糖 Tangtang (me, ig: @/tang.tang.mm)
Makeup: 玉藍 Yulan / Chlobalt Blue (ig: @/chlobaltblue)
Photography & Editing: Hong Majaya (ig: @/hongwithcamera), Sylvia Gong (ig: @/sybiashoots)
Horses: Giddyup Productions (ig: @/giddyup_productions)
Weapons: Christabel Choi (ig: @/christabel_choi), Haydon Fu (ig: @/fuhaydon), Kevin Wong (@ktw-shu)
Additional Assistance: Faye SunLocation: Sunol, California, USA
Clothing: Cloud9 Hanfu 九雲閣 (ig: @cloud9hanfu), 君馬黃 Ferghana LNY26
Earrings: 竹编饰品非遗坊, 糖糖 Tangtang (me, ig: @/tang.tang.mm)
Hat: 糖糖 Tangtang (me, ig: @/tang.tang.mm), Amazon
Shoes + Gloves: Also Amazon lol
