With the hit of Wong Kar-wai's drama "Flowers", a long-lost brand, Meng Tejiao, suddenly returned to the public eye.
As one of the most famous French brands in China, Mengtejiao's popularity in the hearts of the public back then was really not inferior to today's LV. "Flowers" summarizes Meng Tejiao's status in the rivers and lakes in this way: "In the early days of reform and opening up, the people's demand for a better life continued to improve in social progress. The French-made Monte Silk T-shirt made most Chinese start the pursuit of fashion brands for the first time. The sky-high price of 900 yuan a piece did not deter the enthusiasm of buyers, and still made Chinese people rush to it. A flower on the chest has become the standard for the trendsetters of the times. ”
But feelings return to feelings, reality returns to reality, and today's Mengtejiao has been abandoned by young consumers outside the fashion ranks. Li Naiwen, who was born in 1974, once wore a Mengte Jiaoliang silk T-shirt to attend an event, and was complained by his peers Li Xiaoran that this was an "old man's shirt", while Zhou Yi, who was born in 1996, and Zhou Qi, who was born in 2000, didn't even hear of this brand.
At the same time as "Flowers" was on the air, news came that due to the renovation plan of Shanghai Sixth Department Store, the only Mengtejiao clothing store in Shanghai may be closed.
Over the years, there have been many mysteries surrounding Montejiao, such as, is it a pure French brand? What is the material of the legendary "bright silk" that cannot be burned by fire? How was it lifted to the sky by a generation, and how was it abandoned by a generation as the tears of the times?
In terms of pedigree, Montegaux is indeed an authentic French brand, and its founding family is now in its sixth generation. On the official website of Mengtejiao, the story between six generations of the family and the development of the brand is recorded:
As early as the 16th century, the Saint-Sauveur de Montagut in the province of Mont Valley in southern France was designated as a trial area for sericulture by the French kings, and since then, silkworm breeding and silk production have become a local tradition that has lasted for centuries. In the 1860s, Adolphe Tinland, the ancestor of the founding family of the Montagut brand, seized the background of the Industrial Revolution and set up a local silk thread factory called MONTAGUT, which began to operate as a company in 1880.
（梦特娇创始人Adolphe Tinland）
Later, Adolphe's eldest son, Gaston Tinland, worked hard to industrialize the factory, and in 1925 he set up a knitting workshop to produce stockings using electricity.
（第二代Gaston Tinland）
BY THE MID-20TH CENTURY, GEORGES TINLAND, THE SON OF GASTON TINLAND AND A THIRD-GENERATION HEIR, FOUNDED A SILK KNITTING FACTORY AND PRESCIENTLY BRANDED THE PRODUCTS PRODUCED BY THE FACTORY, STARTING TO PRODUCE AND SELL LUXURY LINGERIE AND HOSIERY UNDER THE MONTAGUT NAME. This was a visionary decision in the history of the Montag brand, and as stockings began to become mass consumer goods, the Montagute brand and the family behind it were able to make a lot of money before the Second World War.
（第三代Georges Tinland）
After the Second World War, there was a shortage of natural silk raw materials, and at this time, the family behind the Montegaux brand met another noble person who changed the fate of the brand - Léo Gros. After completing his engineering studies, Léo Gros took over the dyeing business run by his father, Fernand Gros, after which Léo Gros met his client, Georges Tinland, who in 1963 became Georges Tinland's son-in-law.
(第四代Leo Fat)
It was Léo Gros who invented the alternative to natural silk, a unique fabric made by combining polyamide fibers and yarns with a complex weaving technique, which is comparable in appearance, feel and comfort to natural silk, but with the strength of nylon and not as wrinkle as silk The resulting polo shirt became another of Montejiao's ace products after the hosiery, and gradually became famous through Leo Gros's promotion during his travels in the Middle East and Asia.
Friends who are familiar with fashion history may be reminded of the family behind Hermès, which has also been passed down for six generations, and it was Robert Dumas, the son-in-law of the third generation heir, Émile-Maurice Hermès, who drove the brand to achieve a major breakthrough in terms of products - in 1937, under the leadership of Robert Dumas, the first silk scarf of Hermès was introduced, and the silk scarf has since become one of the heirlooms of Hermès.
Going back to Montague, why did this French brand become so popular in China and become a famous brand in the minds of a generation?
In fact, passed to the fourth generation of Léo Gros here, Montejiao's situation is quite embarrassing, in the fifties and sixties of the last century, the golden age of the vigorous development of haute couture, the French fashion scene has emerged too many designers and classic designs that have not been surpassed so far, although Montejiao has the "bright silk" T-shirt this international hit in the town, but because the design has no sense of fashion, the brand is a small transparent in the hearts of European and American consumers, far from reaching the height of luxury brands. Léo Gros's strategy was not to improve design, but to look for business opportunities in the wider world, and one of the steps was to establish a subsidiary in Hong Kong in 1971. A few years later, Léo Gros and Montejiao seized the momentum of China's reform and opening up.
In 1979, Leo Gros sent his son Pierre Gros to the Hong Kong branch, and Pierre Gros and his wife and several senior engineers visited Chinese mainland in depth. During this trip, Pierre Gros made two major discoveries, one was that the vast majority of clothing sold in Chinese mainland at that time was produced locally, and there were no foreign brands, Pierre Gros felt that this was a major business opportunity, "At that time, everyone told us to wait, because China is still poor, but I don't think so, because almost all the clothes sold in the market are local, which makes the products from France more attractive." ”
(第五代Pierre Gros)
Another major discovery was a look at the psychology of consumption, when some people returning to the mainland from Hong Kong would bring souvenirs to their relatives, and these fashionable packaging focused on Hong Kong gifts met people's psychological needs to show off their strength. Pierre Gros immediately realized that if she could make her clothes a fashionable and bragging rights gift for Hong Kong people to buy for their relatives and friends in the mainland, it would be a great market.
So, in that era when fashion began to revive on the land of China, Meng Tejiao and Pierre Cardin took the lead in becoming "crab eaters", the difference is that Pierre Cardin focuses on women's clothing, and Meng Tejiao is positioned as men's clothing, and the main focus is the bright silk T-shirt. Soon, Montejiao began to use Hong Kong, China as a bridgehead, and cut into Guangzhou, Shanghai and other mainland metropolises through agents, and then penetrated into second- and third-tier cities step by step.
It came early, it came at the right time, and it was a big deal, but at the same time, it was also very important to publicize its products – more and more advertisements for its products appeared in China's first-tier cities, Pierre Gros once recalled: "At that time, it was cheap to advertise in big cities in China, not as expensive as it is now. ”
In 1992, Montejiao also held a fashion show at the Portman Hotel, the most exclusive hotel in Shanghai at the time. It can be seen from the promotional posters at that time that the show tickets were 75 yuan and the show lunch was 150 yuan......
In addition, the Portman Hotel in the poster is located in the center of Nanjing West Road, Jing'an District, Shanghai, Shanghai Centre's designer is called John Portman, he was the first foreign architect to enter the Chinese market after the reform and opening up, Shanghai Centre is his first project for China, opened in 1990, is a theater, hotel, shopping mall as one of the integrated buildings. From 1990 to 1997, Portman Shangri-La, which occupied the central tower of Shanghai Centre, was managed by The Ritz-Carlton Hotels and Resorts from 1 January 1998. To this day, the Portman Ritz-Carlton is still a partner hotel for many of the biggest names in fashion.
Speaking of Mengtejiao, in 1991, the average monthly salary of employees in Shanghai was 281 yuan, and the price of a Mengtejiao T-shirt was about 900 yuan, which was equivalent to the salary of ordinary workers in Shanghai for more than 3 months that year. Therefore, the earliest batch of users of Mengtejiao are destined to be high-income groups such as Hong Kong businessmen, self-employed people, and white-collar workers of foreign companies, and one of the largest customers is Wenzhou bosses. There is a passage that describes the typical image of the boss in Wenzhou back then: "When a person is middle-aged, he is fat, holding a black or brown handbag, and he uses a Motorola mobile phone to contact business in high spirits." The important sign is that he is wearing a shiny, brightly colored Montagu T-shirt with a small flower on his left chest. These Wenzhou bosses have become the wild spokespersons of Mengtejiao, and they spread the reputation of Mengtejiao and drive its sales in the way of passing from person to person, and from man to woman.
At that time, there were a lot of wild advertising words about Mengtejiao's bright silk T-shirts, for example, this bright silk material is cold in summer, and even a lighter can't burn out; That small flower is the logo of the brand, and it is also a symbol of "worth", which constitutes the soul of the whole dress and firmly grasps the hearts of the Chinese people at that time.
And once any product becomes a hit, it will inevitably be plagiarized, with the popularity of Mengtejiao in the Chinese market, the market is gradually flooded with all kinds of counterfeit products and replacement versions. In 1994, there was an article in the "Xinmin Evening News" complaining: "For example, the black T-shirt of 'Meng's (special) Jiao' was once the uniform of the 'piling mold' on the road" - which means that Meng's Jiaojiao is the "uniform" of scalpers. And when the boss and the worker are wearing a piece of clothing, outsiders will not be able to distinguish who is wearing the real and who is wearing the fake, who is the boss and who is the worker, which is bound to make the shopping enthusiasm of those who are really willing to pay for the real thing seriously frustrated.
After entering the 2000s, with China's accession to the WTO, the country was further opened, and more and more international brands with diversified designs entered China one after another. And when it comes to the next generation of consumers, they have begun to use "soil" to describe Mengtejiao's style.
Today, Montejiao has passed into the hands of the sixth generation of the head, the younger sister Marine Lozet-Gros is in charge of the design style, the elder brother Nicolas Gros is in charge of financial operations, the brother and sister have carried out a comprehensive innovation within the brand as soon as they took office, knitting and fabric technology is still the brand's main trump card, but in the product line, it has long expanded from men's T-shirts to men's clothing, women's clothing, children's clothing, footwear, leather goods and other product lines, the style is mostly basic models of a business nature.
(第六代妹妹Marine Lozet-Gros)
(第六代哥哥Nicolas Gros)
Bao Jianfeng was invited to serve as the spokesperson.
Nowadays, in the flagship store of Montejiao Tmall, the price of products ranges from more than 100 yuan to more than 1,000 yuan.
The former ace product bright silk T-shirt is about 1200 yuan, and the price is still strong in horizontal comparison. But in vertical comparison, more than 30 years ago, the average monthly salary of employees in Shanghai was less than 300 yuan, and the bright silk T-shirt was sold for 900 yuan, and 30 years later, in 2022, the average monthly salary of urban workers in Shanghai exceeded 12,000 yuan, and the bright silk T-shirt only rose by three or four hundred yuan.
Times have changed, the flowers have fallen, and the iconic little flower is still there, but what everyone is chasing has changed.