Song Jin vest with jeans, shirt with horse skirt, stand-up collar, cloud shoulders and other elements "walk" into daily wear...... This spring and summer, "new Chinese" clothing continues to be popular and has become a new phenomenon in the domestic consumer market. What creates the "traffic password" of national style clothing? How did the "national tide" become a boom? The reporter walked into the first-line market and interviewed all parties in the industry.
Fire, the clothing market "blows" the "national tide wind"
Handmade cardigans, Xiangyun gauze dresses...... "post-90s" white-collar Ms. Wang's Taobao shopping cart, added a lot of "new Chinese" clothing. She said that since last year, she has been obsessed with national style dressing, and has collected almost every type of popular trendy products. "When you go shopping, you will choose 'new Chinese style' to match, which is both fashionable and interesting."
Tourists dressed in Hanfu take photos by the West Lake in Hangzhou on April 18. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Han Chuanhao
Since the beginning of this year, the "new Chinese style" has continued the hot trend. Walking in the streets and alleys, you can see people wearing all kinds of national style clothes from time to time. On platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, "new Chinese style" continues to be a hot topic. Kuaishou e-commerce data shows that in the first quarter of this year, the number of orders for "new Chinese" style goods increased by 700% year-on-year. The order volume of Hanfu products increased by nearly 300% year-on-year.
"Half a year after our orders are scheduled, the compound annual growth rate of revenue exceeds 100%." Lin Qi, the non-genetic inheritor of the horse face skirt making skills and the founder of the "Life Left" brand, told reporters that he has been making and promoting horse face skirts since 2016, and only a dozen pieces were sold a year at that time. In just a few years, the annual sales of the company's horse face skirt have reached nearly 100,000 pieces. "The market has changed a lot." Now, she said, the brand's customers include not only people with high spending power, but also a large number of young people.
Song Jin, who carries a heavy history and culture, has also become the "top stream" of "new Chinese" clothing.
In the production workshop of Suzhou Shangjiukai Silk Technology and Culture Co., Ltd., a piece of Song Jin fabric with exquisite patterns has been rolled off the assembly line. Wu Jianhua, chairman of the company, introduced that the market demand has surged, the company has maintained full production, and the loom has expanded to more than 100 units. It is expected that in August this year, the daily production capacity will reach about 3,000 meters.
"The 'out of the circle' of national style clothing is closely related to the popularity of traditional culture. Consumers not only pay for clothing, but also recognize the aesthetic significance and cultural value it carries, which is an intuitive manifestation of cultural self-confidence. Yang Xiaodong, full-time vice president of the China Garment Association, believes that the national style clothing has become a new track in the industry. It is necessary to seize the opportunity to make the national style clothing better into the market and life. ”
New, cross-border integration unlocks the "traffic password"
Behind the popularity of "new Chinese" clothing, there are new changes in the industry.
New design, organic fusion of tradition and modernity -
Today, the horse-faced skirt from history has a more diverse presentation: from the long skirt to the eight-point skirt and the six-point skirt, the length changes to adapt to more occasions; From thick woolen to light cotton, linen and silk, the texture has been improved to meet the needs of different seasonal wearing scenes; Patterns, cuts, colors...... Because of the integration of more and more fashion elements, the horse face skirt has better plasticity.
On April 11, Chinese costume lovers picked up accessories at the national style market of Shanghai's "World Expo Source". Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Liu Ying
From cheongsam to Hanfu, behind almost every "hot style" is a reinterpretation of tradition. "We have invested a lot of time and money to collect seven or eight hundred traditional patterns of Song Jin, study the weaving process, and innovate on this basis to make it more in line with the aesthetics of modern people." Wu Jianhua said.
"The 'new Chinese' clothing is to find a balance between tradition and fashion, and in the continuous polishing and innovation, it makes the Chinese style more international." Qian Mengyuan, chairman of the clothing brand Hengyun Yaxu, thinks.
New technology, constantly meeting new needs——
The innovation of fabrics has improved the wearing experience of "new Chinese style". Wu Jianhua told reporters that while modernizing the weaving process of Song Jin through electronic jacquard machines, the company has also carried out research and development of elastic Song Jin to improve the wrinkle resistance, color rendering and comfort of the fabric, so that it is more suitable for modern wear.
The application of digitalization promotes the organic connection between supply and demand. Improve the efficiency of developing "popular models" through big data analysis; The fashion release adopts the mode of "virtual + reality"; Accelerate the application of industrial Internet and make flexible manufacturing more popular...... A series of practices are being developed in the industry.
It is worth noting that many companies have increased co-research and co-creation with supply chain partners. From Xucun in Haining to Shengze in Suzhou, some industrial clusters have created new IPs with the help of manufacturing advantages to promote the integration of clothing and cultural tourism.
"Many of the 'new Chinese style's 'gameplay' are different from the traditional clothing industry." Industry insiders believe that the national style clothing will expand more possibilities in the cross-border.
Stability, keep the core and let the "national tide" continue to become a craze
"New Chinese" clothing is developing rapidly, but there are also mixed products on the market. Industry insiders believe that with the expansion of the industrial scale, it is necessary to pay more attention to improving quality, and make more efforts to purify the market environment and strengthen the coordination of the industrial chain.
"I'm not worried that Song Jin doesn't have a market, I'm afraid that it will be bad." Wu Jianhua said that since the beginning of this year, there have been many imitations in the market, although the appearance is similar, but the process and fabric are very different. The company will weave brand symbols on the edge of each fabric to resist counterfeiting and other behaviors, and will also study high-tech anti-counterfeiting methods to promote the formulation of standards and the preparation for the establishment of the Song Jin Appraisal Center.
"Enterprises invest a lot of energy in the research of products and technologies, once shoddy, a large number of inferior products appear, it destroys the normal business order, and is not conducive to establishing a correct understanding of culture." Lin Qi suggested that policies should be introduced to promote the construction of benchmark brands, and at the same time improve relevant norms and establish a value-oriented quality orientation.
Qian Mengyuan believes that the enterprise itself must have determination, make steady progress, dig deep into the connotation of traditional culture, improve the research and development and design capabilities of fabrics, colors, processes, structures, etc., and provide more good products from the supply side.
Not long ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Commerce jointly organized the 2024 "Three Products" national tour to encourage localities, industry associations, e-commerce platforms, etc. to collaborate and empower, support online and offline sales platforms to connect with key production enterprises, and give priority to promoting high-quality national tide brands.
"We established the National Style Clothing Committee a few years ago, and the next step will be to provide professional guidance to designers, increase support for industrial clusters, and promote the high-quality development of the industry from multiple perspectives of culture, products and markets." Yang Xiaodong said. (Xinhuanet)