China News Service, Nanning, February 19th: The Hanfu industry is becoming popular in the New Year, and horse-faced skirts are gaining fans overseas.
Author Yu Jing
During the Spring Festival, the tourist flow in major scenic spots in China is booming. Many tourists dressed in horse-faced skirts, hairpins, and Hanfu are visiting parks and exhibitions, becoming a bright and bright color in the flow of people. In recent years, as Hanfu has become popular at home and abroad, "Oriental aesthetics" represented by Han costume culture has become very popular among young people. The sweeping craze for Chinese aesthetics has driven the current consumption of Hanfu rentals, Hanfu makeup and other related industries, setting off a trend of "wearing Hanfu to celebrate the New Year".
On February 17, tourists dressed in Hanfu checked in and took photos in the Qingxiu Mountain Scenic Area in Nanning, Guangxi. Photo by Yu Jing
Drawing eyebrows and eyes, meticulously combing customers' hair, and wearing Hanfu... During the Chinese New Year holiday, Hanfu makeup orders surged. Zheng Ruonan, the "Makeup Girl" of Guangxi Hanfu, was busy with customers for hours, completing the complex and tedious makeup process. . These New Year makeup and hair styles inspired by traditional Chinese mythological images such as "Ma Gu offers longevity and heavenly officials give blessings" are all created by Zheng Ruonan.
Zheng Ruonan, who has 7 years of experience in Hanfu makeup, is a makeup artist at a photography studio in Nanning specializing in the restoration of ancient Hanfu styles. She is also a Hanfu restoration enthusiast and has long provided makeup services for Hanfu events and shows. Thanks to her accumulation and hobbies, Zheng Ruonan's makeup and hair techniques that restore aesthetics have made her famous in the local Hanfu circle. As early as October last year, she had received an order for a New Year's makeup appointment.
"I am no longer taking orders for shows, because the Spring Festival makeup clients who come to me for makeup have been scheduled for the Lantern Festival. At the most, I have to do makeup for an average of 3 people a day, and I am simply too busy." Zheng Ruonan explain.
Zheng Ruonan said that with the popularization of Hanfu culture, people are no longer satisfied with the increasingly "converging" assembly-line style of traditional antique photography, and styles that tend to be retro and restore aesthetics are more popular among Hanfu enthusiasts. During the New Year, she combined elements such as pottery figurines and murals to launch retro New Year painting-style makeup with bold, exaggerated colors and contrasting colors, which was loved by many customers.
As Hanfu frequently appears in the fashion industry, "wearing Hanfu" has become a new fashion. The "New Year's Jersey" horse-faced skirt, which became popular on short video platforms, has become the best-selling item in the Hanfu category because it combines classic and modern simplicity.
It is reported that Caoxian County, Shandong Province is one of China's Hanfu production and sales bases, with annual sales exceeding 7 billion yuan (RMB, the same below). This year, sales of Year of the Dragon New Year clothes, mainly horse-faced skirts, in Caoxian County have exceeded 300 million yuan. The "Taobao 2024 Spring and Summer Clothing Industry Trend White Paper" released by Taobao shows that the best-selling products of Hanfu are mostly improved and everyday Hanfu.
Nanning Hanfu designer Jiang Yulin believes that integrating current design concepts is the main reason why improved Hanfu such as horse-faced skirts are so popular. During the Spring Festival, Jiang Yulin combined New Year elements to launch Hanfu children's clothing with the word "fortune" sewn on the front and back of the "裲crotch" (a vest-style garment popular in the Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties), which attracted a lot of attention in the local Hanfu circle.
During the Spring Festival, ordinary people will wear patterns with beautiful connotations. Among them, patterns such as fortune and zodiac animals are also widely used in horse-faced skirts. Jiang Yulin said that the popularity of Hanfu has improved people's understanding of Hanfu to a certain extent, and people's understanding of Hanfu has also transitioned from "recognizing Hanfu to calling it dynasty".
Speaking of the popularity of horse-faced skirts, Li Yuting, a native of Guilin, Guangxi, who lives in Rochester, New York, USA, is also deeply touched by this. She once worked as a Hanfu "make-up girl" and Hanfu model. She posted on TikTok "Let's The video of "foreign husband wearing horse-faced skirt" went viral, which made her feel the love of overseas people for Chinese traditional clothing culture.
The picture shows Li Yuting (right) and her husband Zhu Haidan wearing Hanfu to take an artistic photo of the Year of the Dragon. (Photo provided by interviewee)
Influenced by Li Yuting, her husband Zhu Haidan "entered" the Hanfu circle, and the two became a well-known "Hanfu couple" in the local area. In addition to sharing Hanfu outfits on social platforms, the two were also invited to perform Chinese-style programs with local folk bands during the Spring Festival for universities such as the Eastman School of Music. When it comes to spreading Chinese culture overseas, Li Yuting plans to lead a Hanfu market with local Chinese groups to let more people understand Chinese culture. (over)