Including veteran players who are more rigorous and considerate of Chinese culture, as well as young enthusiasts who are interested in it, the mass market's attention to traditional Chinese culture is undoubtedly a key factor in the Hanfu market and even the inheritance and innovation of Chinese culture behind it in recent years. The investment of capitalists or cultural institutions, or the spread of social media, is the most powerful evidence.
Around 2018 to 2020, the Hanfu market ushered in the most brilliant outbreak period. According to the Data of China Commercial Industry Research Institute, from 2016 to 2020, the size of the Hanfu market quickly rose from 370 million to 8 billion. According to the iResearch report, the sales scale of China's Hanfu market has increased from 190 million yuan to 6.36 billion yuan between 2015 and 2020.
The first Xinghan Shengjing Hanfu Cultural Festival
According to the data of Tianyancha, in 2019, there were thousands of Hanfu-related registered enterprises. The Prospective Industry Research Institute has also used data to show that from 2016 to 2021, the number of Hanfu enthusiasts in China has also increased from 693,000 to 7 million.
As the Hanfu market that can best reflect the vitality of traditional Chinese culture in recent years, in theory, it should have a sustained and good momentum of development.
However, in recent times, the market size has shrunk, well-known merchants have closed stores, and compared with the continuous outbreak of a few years ago, the Hanfu market seems to be facing unexpected turbulence. Merchants such as Yijin Jiudu, Huazhixi, and Shenggong Original Design have successively announced the closure of stores and clearances. According to incomplete statistics, since the second half of 2021, nearly 20 well-known Hanfu brands have closed their stores.
Yijin Jiudu clearance processing
Earlier, stores such as Jiu Shao Ji, Yun Pei Yi Yun, and Ji Zhu Ge had already closed around the middle of 2020. As for the reasons for the closure of stores, most of them are due to objective factors such as funds, pressure on goods, and the decline in purchase demand under the epidemic situation.
In addition, according to the Baidu Index and Douyin Index monitoring, in fact, since 2020, the market index of Hanfu and its major brands and related managers has begun to show a downward trend. According to the statistics of "Hanfu Consulting", the total sales value of Hanfu merchants in Taobao's top 10 sales will be nearly 900 million yuan in 2020, which is also lower than that in 2019.
From the observation of the relatively overlapping timeline, it can be found that while the overall scale of the Hanfu market is rising, there is no shortage of a large number of new and old merchants continuing to close stores, and some online channels are cold. The coldness of the Hanfu market is not a temporary turmoil, but an imbalance and instability that has always existed.
Among them, what has been discussed and questioned many times in the past is the chaos in the Hanfu market brought about by businesses pursuing short-term interests, such as price wars, quality, and plagiarism. A series of chaos is not only the foci of the Hanfu market, but also the bubble that needs to be broken behind the rapid growth of the market. Especially around 2019, the Hanfu market has experienced explosive growth again and again, and the order volume of merchants in different channels has increased by 5 to 7 times, which is almost an impossible task for Hanfu itself, which has a long pre-sale period, the fabrics and details that are extremely tested, most of the Hanfu itself that needs to be completed by hand, or the supply chain that is not huge. Those factories and merchants that greeted the profits were given a period of opportunity.
But for any market, turbulence and turnaround have always coexisted. With the exposure of seemingly cold phenomena such as store closures and shrinking market size, after experiencing a reshuffle of the survival of the fittest, the future Hanfu market may be expected to return to the next stage of calm and health.
"In fact, it is not that there are fewer people who like Hanfu, as everyone knows more about Hanfu and buys more, the choice of styles and the requirements for quality are becoming more and more cautious," a Hanfu player named Xia Gongzi (pseudonym) told WWD China. According to her observations with other Hanfu players around her, the impact of the epidemic certainly exists, after all, the Hanfu Festival and other activities have been cancelled. But on the whole, the shops that have been closed in recent times are more small traders and hawkers, and those old shops that have a certain guarantee of quality and professionalism have actually been there.
In April 2021, hanfu brand has completed more than thirteen rounds of financing
Tuyue Tuyue brand founder Yang Yingying also mentioned in an interview with WWD China that when communicating with friends who do Hanfu around, she learned that the outbreak of the Hanfu market a few years ago did give birth to a lot of new brands and new businesses, but not everyone is promoting the market to grow in a healthy direction, she said: "There will always be many merchants who are not working hard in the direction of doing branding, and there have been friends who have done Hanfu before to tell me. Many merchants who originally made Hanfu turned to the inverted large-sleeved cheongsam of the Republic of China period. ”
At the same time, Yang Yingying also said that in the face of turbulence and change, whether it is for Hanfu or the entire industry, it is not necessarily a bad thing, but an opportunity for market conditioning. In addition, Wang Shuyang, co-founder of Hanfu brand Qian Xiaoqiu, and Wu Jiaying, designer and founder of Tangxindan, positioned as China's new luxury embroidery brand, also told WWD China that this is a normal market elimination mechanism.
Therefore, whether it is the Hanfu market or the overall fashion industry, the merchants who position their business models to benefit in the short term have always been there. What happens in the current Hanfu market is not so much a cold or crisis, but rather a conditioning period of survival of the fittest, in the future, whether it is the Hanfu market or a wider range of inheritance and innovation issues, the backbone that has experienced the test will bring more possibilities to the entire industry.
Although there has always been a controversy surrounding the strict restoration of history and the active improvement and innovation, for traditional clothing in the case of Hanfu, there is no doubt that innovation is the objective premise that can form market popularization and effectively realize cultural inheritance in the contemporary context.
Wang Shuyang said in an interview with WWD China that before founding the brand, she was a Hanfu enthusiast and did a series of trend research and research on the direction of Hanfu. But she is also thinking about how to make more people willing to wear Hanfu through innovation and breakthroughs, and even not just stick to traditional festivals and theme activities, which can bring more effective consumer expansion to the Hanfu market.
Qian xiao qiu snow mountain flying fox Ming system improved round collar robe
"When I participated in a Hanfu Expo last year, my biggest feeling was that the homogenization of products in hundreds of brands in the three-hour release process was very obvious, which was not very beneficial for consumer expansion. There is no doubt about respecting tradition, but I still feel that Hanfu itself is very playable and has a lot of room for modernization, so it has the brand of 'making a Hanfu with ancient and modern cultures', that is, Qian Xiaoqiu's idea," Wang Shuyang told WWD China in an interview.
In addition, not only stuck to Hanfu, in the face of the current international influence of traditional Chinese culture, has always been an existing cultural treasure in the Chinese fashion industry, and continues to broaden the inspiration pool of more and more Independent Chinese designers and brands. When the Hanfu market is in the "conditioning period", the important issue of cultural inheritance and innovation has not stopped.
This is not uncommon for the Chinese fashion industry, which is currently in an upward period.
As Yang Yingying, founder of tuyue Tuyue brand, told WWD China: "The attention to Chinese history or art history will not waver, because it is 'ready-made' and very excavatable." As for some of the sense of responsibility we often hear about defending Chinese culture, not to mention this, because both the process of growing up and the education received came from this land. ”
Not only as the founder of the brand, Yang Yingying is also a contemporary artist, and in her previous studies at the Guangdong Academy of Fine Arts and the Central Academy of Fine Arts, she also focused on the study of art history and experimental art respectively. Founded in 2008, tuyue Tuyue brand is an artist-derived brand that is positioned to reinvent Chinese elegance. As a designer, Yang Yingying told WWD China that history can bring inspiration to contemporary designers, but she hopes to extract the emotions that belong to Chinese culture from the deep Chinese culture, and combine the designer's understanding and innovation of Chinese aesthetics to bring energy to contemporary society.
Tuyue Tuyue Spring/Summer 2022 collection
Tuyue Tuyue's Spring/Summer 2022 collection, themed "After Tomorrow", distills the aesthetics of the Northern Dynasty period of dunhuang's Mogao Caves into the costume, discussing the existence of a situation and relationship. At the same time, the collection also uses some recycled fabrics, and invites Chen Jin, an artist who pays attention to the environment and a national second-level artist, to create on the clothing, emphasizing the artistry and sustainability of fashion; in Tuyue Tuyue's Spring/Summer 2021 collection inspired by "Kwa Father", it emphasizes the sense of power through silhouettes, conveys a gentle mood through soft natural fabrics such as silk or linen, and expresses the romantic tragic heroism in Kwa Father's daily story.
For TangXindan, a new luxury embroidery brand in China with a history of more than 1,400 years, which takes the national intangible cultural heritage of Ningbo, China, as the core aesthetics and inherits the oriental craftsmanship and traditional cultural temperature, firmly grasping the high-level handicraft with unique Chinese historical characteristics is not only the foundation of Chinese cultural inheritance and innovation, but also an effective channel for Chinese and Western fashion and cultural exchanges. Katrina Wu, designer and founder of Tangxindan, told WWD China: "In the face of changes in the market and consumer aesthetic needs, it is crucial to master the skills in your hands, rather than blindly depicting traditional elements such as past patterns. ”
Sugar Heart Dan Tangxindan
In addition, Wu Jiaying Katrina Wu also said that for Tangxindan, or more brands that adhere to cultural inheritance and innovation, designers are only one of the roles, how to meet the aesthetics of contemporary people under the premise of retaining traditional advantages, and combined with the promotion and promotion of young and modern brands, so that the inheritance and innovation of traditional Chinese culture becomes a general consensus, rather than a marketing caliber, which is a topic that everyone needs to think about and try.
For a long time, Tangxindan's embroidery workshop in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, has had a number of embroidery girls who are well versed in Chinese culture and proficient in gold and silver embroidery, and together with the creative team, they carry out the inheritance and re-creation of intangible cultural heritage, and also make the embroidery girl's craft a sustainable source of income. In addition to holding a series of exhibitions and workshops with the theme of traditional handicrafts, Tangxindan has also cooperated with Italian luxury brand Loro Piana and high-end car brand Porsche for many times, which not only serves as a communication channel for international brands to be close to China's local culture, but also enhances the preciousness and scarcity of Traditional Chinese handicrafts in the field of international luxury goods.
Tangxindan X Loro Piana VIP
Brooch embroidery workshop
For the Chinese market industry, cultural inheritance and innovation are no longer an unfamiliar topic.
From Tuyue Tuyue, Sugar Heart Dan Tangxindan, or Digest Design founder and designer Dooling iang, Mifan Mukzin, and more Chinese designers and brands that draw nutrients from traditional culture, they are no longer just a single retelling of the "generational" history that is far from modern life, but also through their respective brand perspectives and active creative capabilities, they have made closer links with contemporary cultural trends. Form irreplaceable cultural uniqueness and market differences on an international scale.
As the Hanfu market that best reflects the vitality of traditional Chinese culture in the past two years, with the further retreat of the market bubble, the gradual recovery of the external environment such as the epidemic, and the joint help of many forces from young designers, capital forces and cultural institutions, the Hanfu market that has passed the conditioning period in the future will inevitably usher in a healthier and more substantial expansion.
At the same time, from the continuous outbreak to market turmoil, not only for the Hanfu market, it is a market elimination mechanism or conditioning process, and the Chinese fashion industry can also take this opportunity to gain a systematic wake-up call - with the inheritance and innovation of Chinese culture continues to receive attention and investment, although the market chaos that pursues short-term interests cannot be completely avoided, as more and more Chinese designers and brands know how to dig out and apply cultural treasures with unique Chinese characteristics more sincerely and prudently, the future is bound to usher in more long-termism, And healthy international influence and market size. WWD
Interview, writing yalta
Image source network