Outgoing Han Style Clothes Appear At Paris Fashion Week

As an "ancient style" garment with intangible cultural heritage craft value, horse face skirt is increasingly sought after by young people.

Hanfu design is more and more suitable for daily situations.

Digital channels accelerate the popularization of "antique" clothing.

Since the beginning of this year, the horse face skirt has become a craze in the fashion industry. In May, the list of the eighth batch of representative projects of intangible cultural heritage in Haizhu District, Guangzhou was updated, and the production skills of horse dress were successfully included in the list of intangible cultural heritage projects. As a "national style" garment with intangible cultural heritage craft value, the poncho dress is more and more popular among young people, especially in the e-commerce and live broadcast fields, and has long occupied the top of the clothing sales list.

The fashion trend of "national style" clothing also inspired young people's enthusiasm and inspiration for entrepreneurship. Located in an entrepreneurship park in Panyu District, Guangzhou, the start-up team is a domestic brand "Weaving Division" with only seven men. In just three years, it has achieved a turnover of more than 100 million yuan through the whole line operation, and has become a mainstream e-commerce high-quality business such as Pinduoduo, Taobao, and Diaoyin.

From niche to daily life, "national style" clothing relies on digitalization. On the one hand, Han style clothing continues to "go out of the circle", allowing more consumers to understand clothing with Chinese traditional cultural connotation; On the other hand, with the popularity of Han style clothing, the technology of clothing industrialization has been improved, and traditional clothing has become "fast fashion", or even "going to sea".

　　 Industrial transformation will achieve 95% restoration effect of intangible cultural heritage processes such as Yunjin

Around 2010, Hanfu still belongs to the minority sub culture. In recent years, with the vigorous spread of Chinese traditional culture, Hanfu is increasingly accepted by the general public. At the same time, the "out of the circle" of Hanfu also depends on a group of young people who start businesses in Hanfu.

Xie Linglong is the co-founder of the "Guochao" brand "Weaving Department", and is also a "post-90s" science and engineering man. In 2020, he and six other boys founded the "Weaving Department", a Chinese clothing brand. "At the beginning, we were only engaged in the sales of Han style clothing through the flow side." As the business continued to grow, the team found that Han style clothing had many complicated and sophisticated traditional weaving processes, which also led to its slow production cycle and low output, which was not suitable for the sales model of e-commerce channels, and was not conducive to the popularity of such "national fashion" clothing.

At their entrepreneurial stage, it was just the time when the online demand for Hanfu was exploding - Hanfu manufacturers, with the help of e-commerce, live broadcast and other promotions, increased the overall GMV of Hanfu online. How to solve this contradiction between supply and demand? Young entrepreneurs with flexible thinking decided to "transform" the upstream supply chain.

"This is complementary". The upgrading of the supply chain is not only to solve the sales problem, but also to further promote the promotion and dissemination of traditional Chinese culture. In the team's eyes, Hanfu is not only a kind of dress, but also a cultural symbol, and a carrier of traditional Chinese culture.

How to Industrialize Traditional Weaving Technology? According to his introduction, Nanjing cloud brocade is a major intangible cultural heritage process for making horse face skirts. Among them, "makeup flower" is the most complex variety in the cloud brocade weaving process. This special jacquard process requires two workers to operate the loom manually. Due to the extremely fine workmanship, in ancient times, it could only weave 2~3cm a day. Now, as long as the computer is programmed, the machine can weave patterns according to the preset drawings.

Through industrial transformation, "Weaving Division" can spin up to 12 colors of satin, and restore 95% of intangible cultural heritage processes such as cloud brocade. Zhang Longyi, CEO assistant of "Weaving Division", said that the delivery time of Hanfu is generally 45~60 days. Now, we can achieve the fastest delivery speed of 15~20 days. The delivery speed cycle has been greatly shortened, and the price of the horse face skirt has also been lowered. "Our customer price of each horse face skirt is about 150~450 yuan, and 450 yuan products generally use real silk and more complex processes". Data shows that on the e-commerce platform at present, the best selling skirt of "Weaving Division" is 150~200 yuan, and the audience is mainly the young group of "post-95".

It is understood that the overall transformation plan is a complete set of machinery and equipment plan developed by the team after many visits to the origin of Nanjing Yunjin to find the inheritors of intangible cultural heritage, and discussions with textile experts. At present, this whole set of solutions has obtained relevant patents.

　　 Outgoing Han style clothing will be launched in Paris Fashion Week

The daily use of Hanfu is based on the judgment of Xie Linglong's team on the market at the initial stage of entrepreneurship three years ago, Some "points" are needed to stimulate the development of the Hanfu industry.

Lower the threshold and turn the horse face skirt into a daily item. "Tell the public that there was a high-end clothing horse face skirt in the Ming Dynasty, which can be worn by everyone in modern times, not only to watch others wear it on the tremolo, but also to take the subway, commute daily, and even eat hot pot" - since we know the direction, the team will move towards this goal.

According to the data released by iMedia Consulting earlier, the size of the Chinese hanfu market increased sharply from 190 million yuan to 10.16 billion yuan from 2015 to 2021, and it is expected that the size of the Chinese hanfu market will reach 19.11 billion yuan in 2025.

At this year's Paris Fashion Week, the fashion designer Lin Qi participated in the exhibition with a horse face skirt, which attracted wide attention in the fashion industry. At the same time, some fashion experts and Chinese models on the scene put on the horse face skirts customized by the "Weaving Department", making clothes with traditional Chinese technology appear in the world famous fashion shows. "In the past, foreigners knew that China was famous for its tea, porcelain, silk, etc. In fact, the Chinese nation's millennium textile technology is also commendable", Zhang Longyi said, "In the near future, the Han style clothes at Paris Fashion Week will be launched".

Now, in the view of the "Weaving Department" team, their brand goal is to revive the intangible cultural heritage process through industrialization, so that the intangible cultural heritage industrial arts can be applied to a variety of scenes and categories.

　　 Different types of platforms infiltrate into the "hot money" to promote the national tide

Channel digitalization is another important factor in the popularization of "national style" clothing. "It is already the third horseface skirt, and its quality is as good as ever. The embroidery is too exquisite." "The effect is very good, and the pictures are taken directly." "The pattern of the skirt is too exquisite, and it can be worn with different shirts"... Now, the horseface skirt and other Chinese clothes have become one of the popular clothing categories of the "Double 11" this year.

"We launched Pinduoduo two years ago, which is also an earlier group of Hanfu brands on the platform." Liang Runfa, the new e-commerce operator of "Weaving Department", introduced that the brand had been launched on Taobao, Diaoyin and other platforms in the early years. In order to gain the favor of consumer groups in different regions and seek greater growth, we have actively "tested" new e-commerce, "grass planting" e-commerce and other e-commerce in recent years. For example, in Pinduoduo, the main consumer groups of our brand Hanfu are women between 20 and 30 years old, including urban white-collar workers, mothers, etc., as well as a large number of student groups. The style with a customer price of about 100 yuan is highly popular. The data shows that the annual sales of the brand has exceeded 10 million yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of more than 100%.

In addition, the reporter learned in the interview that in the past, people believed that the users of Hanfu mainly concentrated in the first and second tier cities, but the data showed that it was more popular in the third, fourth and fifth tier markets. "This is also the reason why we continue to expand different types of e-commerce channels. Now e-commerce channels are subdivided, and different platforms have their own user profiles." Liang Runfa said so.

The data shows that in Pinduoduo platform, "Guofeng" Hanfu and other clothing are one of the popular products in the last two years, with an annual growth rate of more than 230%. Since this year, the horse face skirt has become the most popular product Top1 among the "post-95s" and "post-00s", and the sales of many popular items have reached one million yuan.

Before the promotion of the "Double 11" this year, the number of brand Chinese clothing products with subsidies of more than 10 billion yuan has increased by more than 10 times, and the number of children's Chinese clothing products in autumn and winter has increased by more than 340% year on year.

Analysts pointed out that the rise of Hanfu is an example of the blending of traditional culture and modern life. In the future, Hanfu will be moderately integrated into modern clothing concepts and elements on the basis of inheriting and emphasizing traditional elements such as shape, which will be conducive to the long-term development of Hanfu industry.

Article/Quiet picture of Guangzhou Daily full media reporter/provided by respondents (source: Guangzhou Daily)