In December 2023, the horse-faced skirt, one of the standard features of Hanfu, was rated as one of Taobao's top ten products of the year, and also became a popular "New Year's shirt" during the 2024 Spring Festival. Many consumers' initial recognition of horse-faced skirts may come from the "horse-faced skirt incident" two years ago, from celebrities carrying goods, or from social media promotion, but no matter what, horse-faced skirts are very popular. , and whether the Hanfu represented by this skirt is about to usher in great wealth is worthy of our attention.
01 The Origin of Chinese Clothing: The Horse-faced Skirt Broken by AccidentIn this Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon, you must have seen many people wearing a dignified and gorgeous pleated skirt on the streets and tourist attractions. In this year’s three-piece New Year’s suit of “buying new clothes, getting a manicure, and perming your hair”, horse-faced skirts suddenly emerged and became many people’s “New Year’s shirts” and also became the number one item in many people’s wardrobes. A piece of Hanfu.
According to Taobao data, during the Double 11 period in 2023 alone, Taobao sold more than 730,000 horse-faced skirts, which could fill 105 football fields. Horse-faced skirts were also rated as Taobao's top ten products in 2023. From spring outings, to wedding toasts, to New Year's jerseys, horse-faced skirts have appeared in various occasions, successfully moving from the niche to the public, "flying into the homes of ordinary people."
According to public information, the horse-faced skirt, also known as the "horse-faced pleated skirt", is one of the main skirt styles for women in ancient China. Its history can be traced back to the Song Dynasty. It flourished in the Ming and Qing Dynasties and became the daily attire of Han women in the Qing Dynasty. After the May 4th Movement, traditional women's skirts gradually disappeared. In recent years, driven by the craze for Hanfu, horse-faced skirts have become one of the most familiar skirt styles among Hanfu fans.
The breaking of the horse-faced skirt was an accidental event. A few years ago, Hanfu, JK Uniforms and Lolita Dresses were also known as the "Three Bankrupt Sisters". The main reason was that they were niche and expensive, and it was easy to go bankrupt after falling into the trap. According to iResearch's "White Paper on the Development of China's New Hanfu Industry in 2022", in 2021, the market size of China's new Hanfu industry will be 10.1 billion yuan, accounting for only 10% of the clothing market.0.8%, still a niche.
In July 2022, at the launch of Dior's early autumn ready-to-wear series, a black mid-length skirt aroused heated discussion among netizens because its style was similar to the traditional Chinese horse-faced skirt. Dior stated in the product description that this skirt "adopts... The iconic Dior silhouette is a new elegant fashion item.” Some netizens who know about Hanfu questioned this as a kind of “cultural appropriation.” However, Dior officials did not respond directly and only removed the product from the official Chinese website. .
After Dior's "horse-faced skirt incident", horse-faced skirts began to appear in the public eye. First, there was a craze among the international students wearing horse-faced skirts to visit museums and attend graduation ceremonies overseas. Many bloggers posted the photos on social platforms. With their own horse-face skirts, celebrities such as Yang Mi, Xu Jiao, and Zhang Yi have appeared in horse-face skirts at various events. From the style point of view, the horse-faced skirt is composed of four overlapping pieces of cloth at the front and back. Compared with other Hanfu items, it is more convenient for living, sitting and lying down. The patterns mostly use traditional Chinese aesthetic elements, such as plants, birds and beasts, mountain springs, gardens, auspicious clouds, etc. , the overall style is dignified, elegant and gorgeous; in terms of wearing, the horse-faced skirt has fewer restrictions and does not necessarily require a full set of Hanfu. It can be well integrated with modern style shirts, sweaters, and coats without appearing obtrusive. Driven by factors such as cultural confidence, the promotion of social media, celebrity sales, and versatile styles, the horse-faced skirt finally became a hot item in 2023, and also became a must-have for many young people during the 2024 Spring Festival. New Year's jersey.
Before the Dior "horse-faced skirt incident", as a mainstream skirt in ancient China, relatively few people knew the specific form and style of the horse-faced skirt. Knowledge of traditional Chinese clothing culture has become a memory of the past. In recent years, as cultural confidence has increased, the revival of Hanfu has conformed to the needs of the times and aesthetics. The popularity of horse-faced skirts has also accelerated the public's awareness of traditional clothing culture. But there is still a long way to go before the entire Hanfu industry is accepted by the public.
Judging from the focus of the audience group, the existing horse-faced skirt consumers can be divided into daily players, enthusiasts and core groups. Most young people who use horse-faced skirts as their "New Year's jersey" only care about appearance. daily players, and for some "fundamentalist" Hanfu fans, it is completelyThe Hanfu restored according to historical data is the real Hanfu, and the others can at best be regarded as "Hanfu elements" or "New Chinese-style" clothing.
The founder of a Hanfu brand once shared some stories about his entrepreneurial journey in a podcast. Unlike other clothing categories where consumers pay more attention to materials and sizes, many buyers of Hanfu focus on craftsmanship and shape and require historical records. The most common inquiries her Taobao store’s customer service receives is about the shape and pattern of a certain piece of clothing. Which dynasty did it come from and which ancient tomb was the cultural relic unearthed from? So much so that one of her customer service staff became very interested in history and was admitted to a postgraduate degree in the history department of a certain university. In order to do a good job in design, the founder needs to constantly visit and study major museums across the country. He went to Dunhuang alone ten times.
Daily players pay more attention to factors such as ease of wearing, the appearance of Hanfu, and price. The traditional horse-faced skirt needs to be tied at the waist, making it difficult for novices to wear it snugly and comfortably. The improved version has added anti-exposure magnetic buckles and other technologies to make it more in line with the public's wearing habits. In terms of price, there are many choices for a single skirt, ranging from custom-made models worth several thousand yuan to popular styles priced at one or two hundred yuan. It can be said that one can be rich and frugal.
02 Is the era of Hanfu coming?In the rapid development of the Hanfu industry in recent years, four major Hanfu production areas have formed across the country, namely Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Cao County in Heze, Shandong, Sichuan and Chongqing, and Guangzhou, Guangdong. These four production areas have different origins and product characteristics. Positioning also varies.
Mainly because of the development of the textile industry in Jiangsu and Zhejiang in modern times, a large number of textile factories and garment factories of different sizes have appeared. The gentleness of the Yanliu Painted Bridge in the south of the Yangtze River has long become the local cultural background. The industrial chain and cultural heritage, The Hanfu industry came into being. Cao County, Heze, Shandong Province, has gained a lot of attention from netizens in the past few years due to the hot Internet meme "Beijing, Shanghai, Guangcao". Everyone suddenly discovered that this unknown county is actually the main performance costume processing base in my country; in the past three years, due to the impact of the epidemic , performance activities in various places decreased, Caoxian County quickly seized the opportunity of the rise of Hanfu, quickly transformed into a Hanfu production base, and focused its product positioning on the sinking market. The Sichuan-Chongqing region is one of the birthplaces of my country's silkworm culture. Shu Brocade has a history of more than 2,000 years. The prosperity of the Land of Abundance has brought more enlightened folk customs. The local residents are more tolerant of "fancy clothes" and have a higher acceptance of Hanfu. Therefore, Hanfu products in the Sichuan and Chongqing regions have higher degree of restoration and better quality. As the forefront of reform and opening up, Guangzhou, Guangdong has a complete clothing industry chain and strong production and design capabilities. Therefore, it has been able to rapidly scale up the Hanfu industry. However, its production line is relatively low-vertical, and its products tend to be more national-style fashion.
Although the industry has begun to take shape, and the horse-faced skirt, as a popular item, has brought new opportunities to the Hanfu industry, there are still some problems in the existing Hanfu industry chain.
Different from other clothing categories, many founders of Hanfu studios do not have a background in clothing design or textile technology. They started with their love for Hanfu.Starting a business, Hanfu has no less requirements for fabrics, craftsmanship, and design than other clothing categories. Therefore, raw material factories even need to educate these new entrants to the Hanfu industry on how to turn a design drawing into a ready-made garment. When it comes to design drawings, except for a few leading brands with strong design capabilities, most brands have the problem of high homogeneity of products, and sometimes even plagiarism. The rapid changes in the market are forcing production methods. New models are released quickly, and the entire industry is in a state of involution. In addition, the embroidery, printing and dyeing and other processes of Hanfu are more complex, the production cycle is longer, and the production cost is relatively higher. The overall profit margin of the manufacturer is smaller, which is not conducive to the development of new products.
In addition to the gradual completion of the industrial chain, the expansion of scale is also inseparable from consumer recognition. According to iResearch's "White Paper on the Development of China's New Hanfu Industry in 2022", more than 60% of consumers who are interested in the new Hanfu expressed their preference for the new Hanfu because it is more in line with daily dressing habits. Compared with the "fundamentalism" of Hanfu, ordinary Hanfu consumers value ease of wearing and practicality more.
When discussing the resurgence of traditional clothing, it’s hard to avoid the kimono, the traditional dress of neighboring Japan. In contemporary Japan, many people still wear traditional kimono on important occasions, but the way to wear kimono is cumbersome and has many rules, making it not suitable for daily wear. A Japanese brand called SOU·SOU has improved traditional clothing into modern clothing that can be matched with modern clothing. In Japan, many fans of traditional kimono also recognize this brand's approach of breaking through traditional clothing norms. At the beginning of the brand's establishment, a shoe called split-toe shoes became an opportunity to detonate this wave of improvement of traditional clothing. At that time, split-toed shoes, as a traditional Japanese shoe, were only worn by older workers and dancers at festivals. Founder Takeyuki Wakabayashi made split-toed shoes into casual styles and used the technology developed by well-known designers. With eye-catching patterns and a series of marketing methods, split-toe shoes have become SOU·SOU's best-selling item. To this day, split-toe shoes are still one of SOU·SOU's iconic products.
After the split-toe shoes became popular, Wakabayashi Goyuki was not satisfied with just selling shoes. He began to try to expand the daily wear products of split-toe shoes. He realized that there was something different with this style of Japanese traditional shoes.The best match for the elemental item should be a kimono that also has traditional elements, so we launched improved kimonos, and then gradually launched stationery, wallets, dinner plates, home accessories and other daily necessities, becoming a brand that has attracted the world A Japanese-style internet celebrity brand sought after by young people.
Returning to the Hanfu industry, will the popularity of horse-faced skirts cause a Hanfu craze in the same way that the popularity of split-toe shoes caused a craze for improved kimonos? In the author's opinion, it is entirely possible. Even though the popularity of the horse-faced skirt may be just a flash in the pan, as a representative of the Hanfu industry, it has provided a good category awareness education to mass consumers, and the rise of national style and national trend has become unstoppable.
So, can there be a brand that is as well-known at home and abroad as SOU·SOU and affordable to the public (most clothing prices on SOU·SOU’s Japanese official website are between 5,000-10,000 yen, which is about several hundred yuan) The national style brand will test the brand's comprehensive capabilities in design and operation. The wealth that pours from the sky may be right in front of us, we will have to wait and see whether we can catch it.
ConclusionConsumption is only one aspect of society. From the popularity of a single product, many humanistic stories and business logic behind it can be discovered. Although the emergence of horse-faced skirts is related to the "cultural appropriation" of international brands, its true popularity is inseparable from the accumulation of cultural confidence and the completion of the clothing industry chain. Only what belongs to the nation can belong to the world. Chinese people need to have costumes that are unique to their own culture.
