Interface News Reporter | Chen Qirui
Interface News Editor | Lou Wanqin
Chinese faces are once again appearing at International Fashion Week. This is not a recent thing. Vogue China editor-in-chief Zhang Ning and fashion blogger Ahalolo participated in Paris Haute Couture Week in July 2022. In September, at Paris Fashion Week for spring/summer 2023, Chinese independent designer brands Didu, Rui and RUOHAN appeared on the official calendar.
This is nothing more than a warm-up. In the just-concluded Fall/Winter 2023 Fashion Week, 10 and 14 Chinese designer brands participated in New York Fashion Week and London Fashion Week respectively, while the number of brands participating in Milan Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week was 6 and 9 respectively. Some are the first time to switch from online to offline after the epidemic, and some are going overseas for the first time in the past three years.
This is also the first time that designer brand CHENPENG has entered the official schedule of Paris Fashion Week in all these years. "After Christmas 2023, Paris Fashion Week officially invited us to hold a show." Chen Peng, founder of CHENPENG, said, "In the end, I also carried all kinds of pressures to do it, and once I agreed, I couldn't cancel it, otherwise I wouldn't be able to enter again." ”
CHENPENG IS A FREQUENT VISITOR TO PARIS, BUT PREVIOUSLY WALKED THE CATWALK AT NEW YORK FASHION WEEK, WHICH OPENED THE SHOWROOM, A STATIC SPACE USED IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY TO DISPLAY AND SELL CLOTHING. Now that the North American market has stabilized, Paris can reach more customers in Japan, South Korea and Nordic countries.
Chen Peng and his team began to create the new series in September 2023, but for various reasons, the official construction did not start until December. It was already the sprint after accepting the invitation to Paris Fashion Week, and the preparation time was just over two months. "At that time, various departments stopped work one after another, and factories were also stopped one after another."
Fortunately, the entire series was completed on time. Chen Peng sent the clothes to Paris in two batches, and because the logistics had not fully recovered at that time, the whole team personally brought five 30-inch boxes to the plane, and even had to ask friends to help "bring the goods". After landing in Paris, Chen Peng began to finalize the details of the show with the local photography team, the show team and the makeup and hair team.
The show was held on March 6. The Paris Fashion Guild gave positive feedback, and many small and medium-sized bloggers who had not been in contact with it in the past also began to participate in the fashion show coverage. "In terms of the configuration of the whole show, we knew exactly what we wanted." Chen Peng said that he only started interviewing models three days before the show, and other Chinese designers who traveled with him to Paris directly said that he had big eyes.
The acquisition of this ability is related to the rapid growth of China's independent designer industry in the past few years, which is why it has attracted the official attention of Paris Fashion Week.
Paris is the global fashion capital, but the rules of Paris Fashion Week are "one turnip and one pit", old brands can only fill in new brands, and long-term attention and screening can be selected by the organizing committee. That's why it's authoritative and attracts global attention.
During the Paris Fashion Week for Spring/Summer 2020 held in September 2019, a total of 7 Chinese designer brands were selected for the official schedule. Although only 2 new ones have been added this time, from the perspective of brand retention, many new pits have been left to Chinese designers. Considering that the cost of a show in Paris is usually between RMB 1.3 million and RMB 1.4 million, the brand that chooses to accept the invitation must have a good enough market performance foundation.
The most important market remains China. "The budget of a foreign buyer store to buy my brand will basically not exceed 100,000 yuan, and 100,000 yuan in China is almost a starting price." Chen Peng said. After several years of changes in the retail industry, consumers are more critical and cautious about brands and products. Therefore, in addition to having a good enough design, it is also more important to go to overseas fashion weeks to walk the catwalk and build brand power.
"Foreign catwalk pays more attention to the inspiration and creativity of the brand this quarter, showing what the brand has studied during this time. The domestic catwalk is a business level, which is equivalent to showing all orderers and distributors the feeling of wearing clothes. Chen Peng continued, "Domestic buyers are still more willing to choose brands that have walked overseas shows, and returning to China after the show can produce several times the transformation of quantitative changes." ”
However, not all buyers will struggle with this. For those buyers of established chain stores, what is more important is the clothing itself and the conversion of sales data. Sometimes these buyers don't even go to the show very often, and their fashion week schedule is to change from one showroom to another.
Tracey Cheng, I.T's director of womenswear merchandising, is one of them. Especially after an extremely busy schedule, she will skip the fashion show and go directly to the Showroom. "I also like to watch shows, but it's more convenient to go directly to Showroom to see and pick goods."
Zheng Yaying first participated in Paris Men's Fashion Week in January, and went to Women's Fashion Week again in March. Returning to Paris and adjusting your mindset is the most important thing. In the past 3 years, online work has been relatively moderate with relatively high-intensity travel, but returning to fashion week means that those days of dealing with more than 10 things in one day are coming again.
"I only spent five days in Paris, and I had about 30 to 40 meetings, even eating and talking about business." Zheng Yaying said. She believes that meeting and talking about things is a respect for the person she works with, and the design of clothes can be more intuitively felt in the offline showroom. "In the past three years, I have made the decision to look at the eye, because there is no way to see online whether the fabric is light or hard and whether it is suitable for wearing."
After three years of changes in the global retail environment, the entire fashion industry is still not as usual. Not only high-end luxury brands, but also many mid-to-high-end designer brands have also increased prices one after another, partly in order to save costs, choose to reduce the style of the new series, and focus on the modification of classic models. Due to the disruption of factories and logistics chains due to the pandemic, the delivery of buyers' orders after fashion week has not fully recovered.
This still affects Zheng and her team today. In the past, nearly 70 percent of the budget was spent on pre-collection collections, as brands placed orders earlier, delivered earlier and sold longer in stores. The remaining 30 percent of the budget is spent on creative Main-Collections.
But now that logistics have not fully recovered, the catwalk collection must arrive later, sometimes just in time for the sale season soon after entering the store, and the solution is to allocate more budget to the early spring and early fall collections. This will also affect the consumer's feelings, after all, transitional collections are always more practical, and gorgeous catwalk styles are the core of building fashion appeal.
Fortunately, there are also positive signals in the industry.
Zheng Yaying also noticed that recently, consumers have taken pictures of fashion week shows to find sales in stores, and the frequency of asking feedback to buyers to order is increasing. In the past few years, consumers and buyers have tended to choose conservative styles, with wearers not in the mood to try flashy showrooms and buyers worried about making mistakes.
Today, in addition to a few leading luxury brands, consumer demand for mid-to-high-end designer brands like Simone Rocha and Jacquemus is increasing. This is a signal that they are gradually jumping out of the conservative mentality of pursuing classic and value-preserving models, which means opportunities for buyers who offer differentiated options.
"We chose conservative styles from 60 to 70 percent to about 50 percent." Zheng Yaying said that this time, the I.T buyer team returned to Paris to select nearly 10 new brands, which is the same proportion as before the epidemic. "I personally felt bored before, and social media has made fashion trends change quickly, so after the epidemic, we have to speed up to find newer and more interesting things for customers."
BOHAN CHIU, FOUNDER OF THE BOH PROJECT, A PUBLIC RELATIONS AND CREATIVE CONTENT COMPANY, HAD A SIMILAR IDEA. He is one of the driving forces behind the expansion of designer brands such as Dries Van Noten and Nanushka in China over the past 3 years, and was involved in the project of the London boutique Machine-A in Shanghai.
Qiu Bohan has already walked around the immigration policy optimization, including Hong Kong, Seoul, Venice and Budapest. "In the past three years, we have been rolling up and we don't know what else to roll up. It's important to go out and see what's going on in the world and get new inspiration. ”
Fashion Week is a place where creative talent connects, and inspiration from around the world can sometimes help brands better develop in China. Part of Khoo's Fashion Week tour is to communicate with these people and recommend them to the brands you work with to develop your next marketing and communications strategy.
"In Paris, I basically met all my friends who were in foreign countries before, and they were very interested in what happened in China in the past few years, and they all wanted to come." Mr. Chiu said executives from about five to six partner brands are planning to visit China. In addition, he also intends to introduce more people from the music and art industry to China.
Rising local awareness and shifting consumption patterns have changed the way fashion brands market in China. But the pandemic has affected the free movement of borders and, while online channels remain open, perception barriers remain, making cultural controversy frequent.
Introducing different creative talents to China can not only revolutionize brand marketing methods, but also promote changes in management's perception. "In fact, we want to present foreigners with the most avant-garde and contemporary China." Qiu Bohan added. He also introduces domestic photographers and stylists to overseas brands, a way to export China's creative power.
Going back to Fashion Week itself, another thing Qiu Bohan has to do is help brands better spread their fashion shows in China.
China's social media landscape has also changed dramatically over the past few years. In the past, Weibo was the main channel for dissemination, but now Xiaohongshu and Bilibili share more traffic. He found that some brands that were not related to celebrities had little response on Weibo, but they were popular on Xiaohongshu.
FOR THOSE DESIGNER BRANDS REPRESENTED BY BOH PROJECT, THIS UNDOUBTEDLY PROVIDES MORE OPPORTUNITIES FOR THEM TO SPREAD IN CHINA ON A LIMITED BUDGET. In addition to opinion leaders in the fashion field, people from the fields of music and art are also being invited to fashion week more and more frequently. Brands want to connect with more levels of community in the country.
A set of data from the Chinese edition of T Magazine shows that a fashion show usually allocates 40% of the seats to the fashion media, 30% to well-known buyers who hold the sales share, 10% to VIP customers, and the remaining 10% to entertainers and celebrities.
The fashion media is made up of editors from fashion magazines and opinion leaders from social media. In the years of rapid transformation of the print media market, the respective shares of the two sides in this 40% have also changed. However, Makihara, deputy director of fashion features of the Chinese edition of "ELLE", believes that good content is always the key, and the value brought by content will compound interest.
Makihara was fortunate that her European visa was still valid, which saved her the cumbersome application process and became one of the few people at the magazine that could catch Milan Fashion Week. When she returned to fashion week, her first feeling was dazed, and she found that she could not use Uber to take a taxi in Milan. Like Zheng Yaying, Makihara needs to adapt to his busy schedule again.
"I basically wake up at 8 o'clock every day and then go to bed at 2 a.m." Makihara said that in addition to watching the show, she also has to attend various previews, dinners and business meetings, but she is still very excited. "The door to the world is open again, and we can go to the world stage to shine."
This feeling was even stronger after she saw Chinese models such as Sun Feifei and Liu Wen selected several times. "Models need these big shows to exercise, they need to experience first-hand how to work with designers and how to interpret fashion. Back in China, whether it is cooperation with brands or magazines, you can go to a higher level. ”
The magazine had already planned the direction of the report before Makihara's departure. Online channels require the fastest speed, and the existing material will be prepared first, and the processing will begin after the image or video in front arrives. And the people in charge of following the celebrities sometimes don't even have time to admire the clothes, they need to shoot enough materials to cut the film as soon as they return to the hotel for release the next day.
Stars still contribute a huge amount of traffic, but who to cooperate with and how to cooperate are all finalized before the show. Both brands and star teams are very willing to cooperate with various fashion magazines, hoping to provide different looks and images for the audience through the creative talents of the magazines.
According to business consultancy Lefty, the ten Chinese artists who participated in the Milan and Paris fashion shows this quarter created more than $49 million in media value. Cai's presence at the Prada fashion show alone generated $1.37 million in media value on Instagram and $2.2 million on Weibo.
But what made Makihara feel new was that this time at Fashion Week, a brand came to ask her to write a show review. "Celebrities are so lively during fashion week that sometimes they grab all the attention, and the message that brand designers want to convey may be hidden." "But now brands want more voices in the industry to come out." ”
Readers are also becoming more interested in this type of content. In practice, online channels will continue to pay attention to celebrity-related content, but there will be more serious planning in print publications. These will be published in the autumn issue in nearly six months. "We follow the seasons. Although the Fall/Winter collection was released in March, it did not go on sale until August and September. ”
However, in September, a new fashion week awaits Makihara, but this time it should be well prepared. Not just for fashion week, but more importantly, how to translate experiences into content to Chinese readers.
"In fact, Milan has not changed much, the store is still those points, and the lively place has not changed." She said, "Unlike Shanghai, one moment Wukang Road rises, and the next time which road queues again. I think that's where the most has changed. ”