This article focuses on the application research of Hanfu elements in modern clothing design, highlighting Hanfu’s profound historical and cultural heritage as well as its aesthetic wisdom. Integrating Hanfu into modern clothing design is significant for inheriting and innovating culture, promoting the diversified development of the fashion industry, facilitating the multi-faceted integration and harmonious development of social culture, and carrying educational value. The research review shows that Hanfu elements are widely applied across daily wear, evening gowns, stage performances, and sportswear, using diverse design techniques such as direct citation, deconstruction and recombination, and abstract refinement. Although academic research approaches this topic from multiple perspectives, challenges remain, including designers’ insufficient cultural understanding, uneven product quality, and lack of intellectual property protection. The current situation analysis reveals that Hanfu elements in modern clothing design feature the symbiotic integration of traditional aesthetics with modern fashion, diverse cultural symbols and individual expressions, coordinated craftsmanship inheritance alongside innovative design, and an organic blend of national spirit with an international perspective. Research and practice cover innovative applications of Hanfu elements in style design, striking pattern presentations in clothing decoration, and unique uses of color in modern clothing color matching. These explorations provide valuable references for the further development of Hanfu elements in modern clothing design, contributing to the inheritance of traditional culture and the innovation of the fashion industry.