爱达荷州立大学中国学生学者联谊会

Chinese Association of Idaho State University (CAISU)

Drives Chinese Clothing Revival

Dressing for Beijing’s winter sometimes means compromising on style. Combination ear muffs and face masks are ubiquitous now that temperatures have fallen below zero and pollution levels regularly read “unhealthy”. But members of the Beijing Hanfu Society persist in dressing in gauzy gowns and silk robes – at least indoors.To get more chinese hanfu, you can visit shine news official website.

With similar groups popping up everywhere from Brisbane to Toronto, Hanfu is rapidly growing in popularity, especially among young Chinese women — the average age of wearers is just 21, and nine out of ten are female, according to an industry report published on Sohu. Hanfu fans on the community site Baidu Tieba now exceed 925,000, up from fewer than 700,000 at the beginning of 2017.

That’s a relatively small fraction of China’s 1.39 billion people, but the growing fascination with ostensibly traditional Chinese clothing has broad implications for fashion brands. Why ostensibly? Because Hanfu’s historical credentials are dubious. Some commentators see the trend as retrofitting in service of a new Chinese nationalism. For most Hanfu wearers, though, historical accuracy and nationalism are beside the point.

Among Hanfu fans BoF spoke to, a common inspiration for wearing Hanfu was interest in wuxia (kung fu fantasy epics) and Chinese palace dramas popular on TV and in cinemas, such as The Story of Yanxi Palace — the most Googled TV show of 2018, whose protagonist Wu Jinyan has gone on to grace the pages of Vogue China and Elle China. Together, wuxia and palace dramas constitute an imaginative world that’s vaster and more compelling to Chinese viewers than the Marvel Universe, which has made over $5 billion in merchandise sales.

“When I was really small, I liked to wear a sheet to pretend I was one of the fantasy characters on TV,” said Sun Ying, explaining her interest in Hanfu. Sun, 28, lives in Huzhou, Zhejiang province, where she runs a fried chicken store. She said she spends several thousand renminbi on Hanfu each year, including material to make her own. Most Hanfu outfits cost 300-500 RMB ($45-70).
According to the Sohu report, about 92 percent of people buy their Hanfu from stores (rather than making it or having it made). Online sales are especially popular. Led by Guangzhou’s ‘Han Shang Hua Lian’, the top ten Hanfu stores on Taobao made 50.67 million transactions in November 2018, up 266 percent on the previous November.

The vast majority of people who wear Hanfu do so during hobbyist get-togethers or for photo shoots. “I see it in some sense as a form of fantasy and escapism, like cosplay or role-playing video games are for a lot of people,” said Eric Fish, the author of China’s Millennials: The Want Generation.

Some Hanfu wearers resent that comparison — “If I’m a cosplayer, then I’m cosplaying your ancestors!” Kang Wei told the Chengdu Business Times — but even if Hanfu were only worn as costumes, that’s still a market with significant growth potential.

The annual Hanfu spend is estimated to be about 570 million RMB ($83 million), while Americans spent $3.4 billon on Halloween costumes in 2017. The vast gap between the two signifies a considerable opportunity for some Hanfu entrepreneurs. Comparing Hanfu to Halloween is perhaps not as farfetched as some might claim it to be. Last year, video platform Bilibili and the Communist Youth League together declared April 18 China Hanfu Day, an opportunity to dress up not as ghosts or vampires, but in all kinds of traditional-looking Chinese clothing.

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