During this year’s Spring Festival, social media platforms were dominated by photos of tourists wearing horse-faced skirts. The Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven in Beijing, Yingtianmen in Luoyang and Riverside Garden during the Qingming Festival in Kaifeng, the compatibility between the horse-faced skirt and the red-walled antique style is exciting, and makes people marvel at the beauty of Chinese clothing. During the Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon, horse-faced skirts have unexpectedly but unexpectedly become a hit item. Many consumers have purchased horse-faced skirts as their New Year’s “shirts,” and even more people have chosen horse-faced skirts as their first Hanfu item. Face skirt.
Big data shows that during the "Double Eleven" period in 2023, Taobao sold more than 730,000 horse-faced skirts. Horse-faced skirts have become the most popular item in the Hanfu category. The reporter searched on various e-commerce platforms and found that the sales of some hot-selling styles of horse-faced skirts exceeded one million yuan. According to reports, in Cao County alone, the sales of Year of the Dragon New Year greeting clothes, mainly horse-face skirts, in 2023 have exceeded 300 million yuan.
Reverse achievement of Hanfu track
From the perspective of historical evolution, the skirts of the Song and Liao Dynasties already have the shape of a horse-faced skirt, which is one of the main skirt styles for Han women in ancient China. The more common horse-faced skirts began in the Ming Dynasty and continued to the Republic of China, often using various auspicious patterns.
The hot sales of horse-faced skirts have in turn ignited the popularity of all categories of Hanfu. Hanfu has gradually become a consumption track for e-commerce platforms. According to Taobao clothing data, as of mid-December 2023, the sales of Hanfu on the Taobao platform in 2023 are close to 10 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 50%, and the number of Hanfu online products on the Taobao platform has increased by more than 60% year-on-year. Data from the professional version of Tianyancha also shows that there are currently more than 6,500 Hanfu-related companies in my country, among which Shaanxi, Shandong, and Henan rank at the forefront.
In fact, from the perspective of Hanfu consumption history, starting from 2015, China's Hanfu market began to form a scale of over 100 million yuan. According to iiMedia Consulting's "2021 China Hanfu Industry Status and Consumer Behavior Data Research Report", from 2015 to 2020, The sales scale of my country's Hanfu market has increased significantly from 190 million yuan to 6.36 billion yuan. In the past few years, Hanfu manufacturers and sellers have enthusiastically entered the market and entered a period of rapid growth. The report shows that the number of Hanfu merchants on Taobao increased by 45.8% year-on-year to 1,188 in 2019, and maintained a growth rate of 27.8% in 2020, growing to 1,518. . However, during the epidemic, due to the reduction in travel opportunities, the Hanfu market was left out by consumers. According to the "2022 China New Hanfu Industry Development White Paper" jointly released by iResearch and others, the market size growth rate of the new Hanfu industry in 2020 and 2021 was respectively It was 3.1% and 6.4%, which was significantly slower than in previous years.
The emergence of horse-faced skirts has reversed the weak trend of the Hanfu market. From an investment and consumption perspective, horse-faced skirts have become the key to making the Hanfu "cake" bigger. With the hot sales of horse-faced skirts, a "super item", Hanfu has been added to consumers' shopping carts again, and the market is gradually picking up.
The weaving industry is transforming at the same time
"The end of fashion is the horse-faced skirt, and the end of the horse-faced skirt is curtain fabric." This is not a joke. A video of someone using "outdated curtain fabric" and transforming it into a horse-faced skirt went viral on social platforms, and it received a lot of praise. In fact, in 2022, a curtain fabric manufacturer transformed into horse skirt fabric. "Orders are coming in like a flurry, and the machines can't stop." A textile business owner in Xucun Town, Haining City, Zhejiang Province once told the media that traditional curtains in the past few years Fabric sales are not good. Due to the popularity of horse-faced skirts in 2022, jacquard manufacturing machines have come into new use. Many manufacturers that originally produced curtain fabrics have used their existing jacquard machines to successfully transition to the production of horse-faced skirt fabrics.
It is reported that there are currently more than 100 textile companies in Xucun Town, Haining City, Zhejiang Province, engaged in the production of horse-faced skirts and new Chinese-style clothing fabrics. The daily production of fabrics can reach more than 30,000 meters, which can be made into nearly 7,000 horse-faced skirts. In China Textile City, the world's largest textile distribution center, more than 30,000 households sell more than 50,000 varieties of textiles. Here, many horse-faced skirt fabrics are hung at the entrance of merchant stores for consumers to choose from.
With the popularity of horse-faced skirts, consumers are increasingly accepting and recognizing Hanfu. Many fabric wholesalers have also begun to study the patterns, styles, and fabric upgrades of horse-faced skirts. Orders for fabrics for children and the elderly are increasing day by day. In order to be more suitable for daily wear, weaving manufacturers have changed the usual animal patterns such as dragons and phoenixes on horse skirts into elegant bamboo, plum, orchid and chrysanthemum patterns, reducing the contrast and making them more everyday. More manufacturers are studying improved fabrics. In the past, horse skirt fabrics were relatively thick. How to make the fabrics lighter, softer and more breathable is a new problem faced by weaving manufacturers.
