Horse Face Skirt Became The "Dragon Year'S Battle Robe", Which Sold 300 Million Yuan A Year

In recent years, with the popularity of "new Chinese style" wear and the fashion circle's attention to traditional culture, horse face skirt has gradually become the favorite of the fashion industry. The big data of several e-commerce platforms shows that since January this year, the search volume of Hanfu has soared. Among them, the horse face skirt has become the most popular item under the Hanfu category, and the sales of many popular items have exceeded one million yuan. As one of the production and sales bases of Hanfu in China, Caoxian County, Shandong Province, will have more than 300 million yuan of sales of the Dragon New Year clothes, mainly horse face skirts, in 2023.

Horse face skirt explodes

Enterprises do not close during the Spring Festival

This Spring Festival in the Year of the Dragon is busy for many horse dress manufacturers. "We haven't had a rest these days." Zhang Mingqiang, the general manager of Zhejiang Haining Mingji Fabric Art, told reporters that since the fourth day of the New Year, customers have come to his factory to see samples because of the research on the new product Songjin horse dress.

"The traditional horse dress is made of jacquard woven gold satin, while the new product uses Song brocade." In Zhang Mingqiang's words, the new product is a "subversion" of the horse dress industry.

Song brocade is known as one of the three famous brocades in China, known as the "crown of beauty" and "inch size gold". Compared with the traditional horse face skirt, the new products using Song brocade are slightly better in terms of production technology and color.

"The original horse face skirt was mainly black and red, but now the main spring version is light color, and the original upper light and lower heavy fabric has been changed to high precision and high density Song brocade fabric." Zhang Mingqiang said, "Although the new product has not been officially launched, customers have ordered two or three thousand pieces."

The popularity of new products has also brought some problems. The production capacity can not keep up and the staff is not enough, which has become Zhang Mingqiang's "new trouble". Expanding production capacity has become his top priority after the Spring Festival. "The purchase of equipment and the recruitment of employees are actively going on," said Zhang Mingqiang, striving to triple the production capacity in the shortest time to meet the demand for orders.

"This Spring Festival sales have been non-stop." Shandong Cao County Luoruyan Original Hanfu Company, which mainly focuses on e-commerce sales, ushered in a peak of offline sales during the Spring Festival.

Li Zilei, the founder of the company, told the reporter that the Spring Festival was originally planned to be a holiday, and online sales were suspended. Unexpectedly, consumers came to the store every day to buy horse face skirts in an endless stream. "We arranged some workers to take turns on duty. At the end of the Spring Festival holiday, the average daily sales were about 400 pieces."

In Li Zilei's opinion, such sales volume is very considerable.

Take back the "right to speak"

The rise of domestic horse face skirt

When did the horse face skirt become popular again? In Zhang Mingqiang's view, this has to mention the "Dior Incident" in 2022.

In July 2022, the internationally famous fashion brand Dior released a mid length skirt with a price of 29000 yuan. Some Chinese netizens found that this skirt is almost identical to the traditional Chinese dress "horse face skirt", but it is called a "brand new" fashion item that "uses the iconic Dior silhouette", and this event soon caused a heated debate.

Traditional culture should be in our own hands. Subsequently, the domestic horse dress camp rose rapidly and the market was revitalized.

After seeing the new business opportunities, Zhang Mingqiang and his wife, who have eight years of clothing business experience, decided to give it a try, and they put some resources into the production of horse dress.

Zhang Mingqiang's company, Haining Mingji Fabric Art, is located in Xucun, a famous home textile town in China. It mainly produces curtains, wall coverings and other textiles, and has a certain technological foundation in the production of horse face skirts.

"We are the trademark applied for at the beginning of 2023, which was officially put into production in July." Zhang Mingqiang said that the popularity of horse face skirts is like waves. Every holiday or peak tourist season, the sales of horse face skirts will increase accordingly. "As a supply chain of finished products, we mainly sell wholesale products to Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu and other cities."

Before the Spring Festival, Zhang Mingqiang's total sales volume of horse face skirts had reached more than 100000 pieces. The production share of horse face skirt has accounted for more than half of his company's layout.

For Li Zilei of Caoxian County, 2023 is also a bumper year.

Li Zilei was initially engaged in live broadcast sales to help businesses sell Han suits. Often, he decided to produce by himself after encountering the shortage of supply. There are many styles of Han style clothes. Li Zilei was moved when he saw that the replicability and operability of the horse face skirt were more dominant.

"It will be officially put into production at the beginning of 2023, with an average daily volume of more than 2000 pieces." Li Zilei introduced that daily sales mainly focus on e-commerce live broadcast supply, offline physical examination hall wholesale and retail, of which e-commerce sales account for a large proportion.

Now in Caoxian County, the production of horse dress is in short supply. It is understood that in 2023, the sales volume of Caoxian County's Dragon New Year clothes, mainly horse face skirts, will exceed 300 million yuan.

In addition, the horse face skirt is also gradually going overseas. Li Zilei told the reporter that customers from Germany, Japan, Russia and other countries have come to inquire. The good development trend has made many manufacturers optimistic about the horse dress market. In Zhang Mingqiang's view, in the next three to five years, the popularity of horse face skirt will be higher and higher, and the market will be more active.

Horse face skirt is popular

Drive the development of related industries

As one of the main skirts for Han women in ancient China, the horse face skirt has been popular with Han clothing lovers.

Why do more and more people like horse dress? What changes have cultural exchanges brought about? The reporter consulted Wen Shaohua, a postdoctoral fellow at the Palace Museum.

"Horse face skirt is the most typical skirt style for women's dress in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, which consists of skirt door (horse face), pleats, skirt waist, skirt skirt, etc." Wen Shaohua introduced that the development of horse face skirt has gone through a long process, which originated in the Song Dynasty and prevailed in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It is a material civilization with both traditional culture and contemporary values.

Horse face skirt shows the connotation of Chinese traditional culture. The traditional Chinese plane cutting method, the full use of fabrics, and the simplified manufacturing process all demonstrate the ancient wisdom of "saving things", "using sparingly", and "careful craftsmanship"; The broad, symmetrical, neutral and straight structure reflects the pursuit of the ancients in life; The combination of horse face and pleats shows the oriental beauty of "combination of movement and stillness, and moderate relaxation".

Over the millennia, the horse face skirt is still popular and has become an important carrier of traditional culture. "Especially after the Dior incident, it aroused Chinese people's love for traditional Chinese clothing and protection of excellent traditional Chinese culture," Wen Shaohua said.

The popularity of horse dress has also driven the development of related industries. From fabric suppliers to designers, manufacturers, and then to distributors, the Hanfu industry chain is booming. At the same time, the popularity of horse face skirt has also promoted the development of cultural tourism, intangible heritage inheritance and other fields, and injected new vitality into the protection and inheritance of traditional culture.

Wen Shaohua believes that the "revival" of the horse face skirt also brings some enlightenment. "More attention should be paid to the popularization, inheritance and development of the excellent traditional Chinese culture. How to make the excellent traditional Chinese culture revitalize is an urgent problem to solve." (Reporter Zhang Qi, trainee reporter Guo Chenhao)

(Source: Qilu Evening News)