From "the first person to wear Hanfu on the street" in 2003 to the current financing of Hanfu-related industries and the cooperation between Hanfu and film and television IP, the popularity of Hanfu culture continues to rise. Hanfu seems to be tearing off the label of niche culture and embracing a wider audience.
However, behind the positive development of the market, a considerable number of people are staying away from the Hanfu circle, and the endless plagiarism is intruding on the development of the industry... People can't help but ask, can this "Hanfu craze" continue? how long?
The dilemma of "breaking the circle" of mid-to-high-end Hanfu
Hanfu, Lolita and JK uniforms are also known as the "three bankrupt sisters". Once they fall into the trap, it means they have another money-burning hobby. . Compared with ordinary clothing, the production process of Hanfu is complicated, and the design, fabric, embroidery, pattern, etc. are quite exquisite. The addition of layers of processes lengthens the construction period and increases the price.
For a mid-to-high-end Hanfu brand, single items usually range from 1,400 yuan to 7,800 yuan, and most sets are priced around 10,000 yuan. Because of the complex process, it takes about a year to wait from placing an order to getting the ready-made clothes. As of May 20 this year, the clothing construction period shown on the brand's official website has been scheduled to mid-March 2022.
It is common to have to wait for a year for a favorite piece of clothing. Although this is only an isolated case, it is not uncommon to wait several months from ordering to receiving the goods. This is undoubtedly testing the patience of consumers. At present, Hanfu merchants basically adopt the sales method of "deposit + balance payment".In the sales method, the consumer pays a deposit first, and the merchant determines the production volume with the manufacturer according to the order requirements.
However, the long construction period and high cost also provide the soil for plagiarism to survive. For an original store, the new styles that can be launched every season are extremely limited. After the market has been turbulent, only a few can become hot items. Liu Hui, who is engaged in the restoration of traditional clothing, said, "Copycats only need to buy a set of hot-selling clothes, and then imitate them, and put them on the market in large quantities at a lower price. For those who are determined to promote traditional culture, Said that the current prosperity of Hanfu has gone off track to some extent.”
The battle between "Shan Zheng" and "Shan Zheng" is intensifying
According to the "2019-2021 China Hanfu Industry Data Survey, User Portraits and Prospect Analysis Report", from the perspective of the purchasing motivations of Hanfu consumers, 47.2% of consumers are motivated by their love for Hanfu culture, and 40.3% are motivated by the pursuit of fashion. The original national cultural symbolic meaning of Hanfu has been diluted and given way to more of a consumer label.
Shape is the criterion for judging whether a piece of clothing can be called Hanfu. Therefore, it is also the bottom line principle that Hanfu enthusiasts have always adhered to. According to Liu Hui, the basic elements of Hanfu include flat cutting and folding, not breaking the shoulder line, crossing the right lapels, and front and rear center seams. However, with the influx of capital, the Hanfu market has expanded its territory, which has increasingly diluted some merchants' insistence on shape and layout, and the battle for "Shan Zheng" in the Hanfu industry has become increasingly fierce.
"Shan" means "cottage", which refers to Hanfu that imitates or plagiarizes other styles. It is understood that even a certain Hanfu brand that received more than 100 million yuan in Series A financing cannot escape criticism of plagiarism. In order to avoid controversy, the product label replaces the word "Hanfu" with "国风". It is gratifying that the growing popularity of Hanfu culture has led to an increase in copyright protection awareness among original Hanfu designers. Taking Cao County, Heze City, Shandong Province as an example, original Hanfu processing companies will first spend 1,000 to 30,000 yuan to buy the copyright for a set of clothes, and then mass-produce them.
From the perspective of industry insiders, no matter how much cultural significance Hanfu itself carries, it is still a piece of clothing in the final analysis. The urgent problem to be solved on the road to breaking out of the circle is still how to make Hanfu more universal. How to balance biographyUnifying the shape of Hanfu with the daily habits of modern people, Hanfu can break the "flaws" of being inconvenient to put on and take off and the hem of the skirt trailing the floor, and become another choice for daily commuting, which will directly determine how long the "Hanfu craze" can last.
Organization/poetry
Source of this article: China Family News
