Resort but No Vacation (For Chinese People)
Summer is an awkward period for Chinese people, especially the ones working in the fashion media. Brands are pulling off the advertisement from magazines and they are not going to put them back until September Issue because of the seasonal gap. And the super hot temperature makes people feel exhausted and sweaty. That’s totally not fashion.
Tim, our fashion director always asks us “What exactly you Chinese do in summer time?” He may expect the answers like musical festival, vacation and some water-related sports games. But unfortunately, he is really disappointed with the real situation. Our Chinese people have to work the whole summer time, only students and teachers can get their holidays.
This makes the magazine planning kind of difficult. Usually, when it comes to summer, foreign magazines like Vogue US or Elle UK will start with a bathing-suit issue and end with pre-fall collection. This works for the westerns. But here in China, we got almost 40 degrees and still have to work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and in the 1st tier city we have to spend more than an hour in hot and crowded subways or bus, like canned sardines. How can you expect they will wear the latest fashion collection? Those clothes are for the people who stay in air-conditioned room never get out of to the street.
The bathing suit thing is more unpractical. Although as a fashion editor, I’ve hypnotized our readers that bathing suit is wearable fashion now, you can put on a coat out of it and just wearing them to the public. The cruel truth is nobody would ever do this in the real life. There are no such swimming pool parties in town, and if you dare to wear a bathing suit though it is super fabulous, people will think you are out of your mind like a freak.
Let me tell you the truth what ordinary Chinese people wearing in the summer. Young people like the T-shirts since they can change them every day and they are very easy to be cleaned. Women prefer one-piece dresses because they are feminine and simple to match with. Men’s wears maybe a little bit like disaster, you barely can see men in long-sleeve suits, and instead they like to wear short-sleeve shirts, vests, polo shirts with ugly short pants and sandals. You can’t blame they for not being fashionable at all. They have to earn money to feed their family and they don’t care what fashion magazines are saying.
Meanwhile the spring and fall is shorter and shorter, but resort and pre-fall collections sell very well in China. It makes sense, they are more wearable and price-value balanced. But let’s make this clear, these people who purchased these collections are still not going to vacations as well. The housewives and mistress like shopping and watching soap opera, they don’t want to burn their beautiful skin in the hot sun. For the most sales part is the day time outfit, like suits or pants or accessories, that means there are many alpha-female trying to work hard to gain more money. That’s what’s happening in this developing country.
(Originally posted on 07/03/2012)
