Parity Free Sex Fashion Has Opened The Market In China.

"I always wanted to know who decided the dress of men and women should be different." this is the question raised by Japanese fashion designer Yamamoto Teruji in 1983.
After many years, the high fashion industry has turned Yamamoto Teruji's sexless fashion into a reality. It is like the brand marketing of Doublelet and Wales Bonner, Gucci's "men and women to eat" that won the LVMH Youth Design Award, or JW Anderson and Thom Browne combined with men's and women's fashion show. No gender fashion is no longer a concept and speech.
But in the advanced apparel retail format, the more important role of sexist is to conceptualize "drainage". From Dior's "smoking suit" in 1970s to today's so-called "boyfriend wind", women always prefer clothes with male symbols. In contrast, men buy and wear clothes with feminine symbols but have been deterred. If Dior's "smoking suit" has contributed to the fight for women's rights, the transparent silk screen shirt launched by Dior Homme is also supporting the male consumers to buy clothes with inherent femininity, such as lace, pink and skirt. These spending habits are challenging the traditional way of differentiating retail categories by sex.
Lane Crawford, vice president of women's clothing, home and jewellery business, Lianna Mann, told BoF: "Lian Crawford is attracting male consumers to buy Women's branded products, and also to sell to women consumers such brands as men's clothing such as Givenchy." And Luisa Via Roma chief menswear buyer Monica Pascarella said: "at present, 30% of men's clothing in the fashion industry has no sexism gene, JW Anderson, Rick Owens, Saint Laurent and other brands have changed our modeling thinking." But usually sex free fashion is more willing to get rid of sex than to sell men's ties to women, or to wear men's hot pants.
Yamamoto Teruji, Rick Owens and Ann Demeulemeester, represented by the high fashion feminism, try to simplify the fashion and simplify the gender symbols to reduce the characteristics of the world. It emphasizes that the world is not two yuan. Not only does it have two kinds of sex, it is actually a relatively vague concept, that is, neutralization and minimalism become a certain pronoun of no gender fashion. This is also reflected in the trend of parity consumption.
In 2016, Zara added the "sex free" (Ungendered) shopping category on the official website, which included some simple T-shirts, denim, sweater and knitted sweater and so on. The colors were also black, gray and white. In China, such brands appear more frequently in Taobao. The Universal Templates of the sex free clothing brand is popular on Taobao with its minimalist clothing for men and women alike. The clothing is mostly loose and natural tailored. It selects a low saturation color which is not offensive and plays a safety card, and is also welcomed by consumers.
However, Bosie did not adopt this approach. This sex free fashion brand, with its diverse designs, rich colors and superimposed all kinds of gender symbols, has captured the young purchasing power after 95 and has achieved great success.
A few days ago, Bosie announced that it had completed tens of millions of yuan A round of financing this year. The current round of financing was led by Qingshan capital, and capital investment was repeated. The brand has already obtained investment from Jiacheng capital, angel Bay venture capital, hunting capital and real fund. Bosie founder Liu Guangyao told BoF that this year's "double 11", the total sales of all brands of the company exceeded 30 million, equivalent to last year's annual growth of nearly 500%. Since its establishment in Tmall in May 2018, less than two years later, the brand has annual sales volume of over 100 million yuan.
In the past, the gender free posture was not popular in mass consumption. But Bosie's success also proves that the idea of no gender fashion in the fashion altar can also be landed in the wardrobe of Chinese mass consumers.
Zhang Yuhao, chief designer of Bosie, said: "no fashion in high fashion is good at subtraction, while Bosie is additive." But regardless of the addition and subtraction, the brand, which originated from Taobao, attributed its success to "good soil". Good soil is precisely the tolerance of all kinds of gender in this era.
The US social media Facebook changed the sex options of personal data from 2014 to 56, and now the gender option on the platform is "unlimited", and everyone can apply for custom extensions. Liu Guangyao, who is also 95, pointed out that the growth rate of Chinese young consumers is faster than we think: "they have no idea of" male superiority and inferiority ", and tolerance is their way of life. At present, the ratio of male to female among Bosie customers is 49:51, 70% of which is 95. Early in the world even thought that the brand was only suitable for minority or even minority groups. Liu Guangyao laughed, "we will not label ourselves, Bosie is suitable for all people. No gender fashion is the process of tagging. Since clothes can be divided into gender, love and love will not be.
But the secret of Bosie's success is not what the brand start-up team called "hitting the right luck". Brand defines itself as a fast fashion designer without gender. No gender, fast fashion, designer brand, these three hot topics of fashion currently cover almost all the consumer groups, achieving "suitable for all groups". Fast fashion and designer brand in the past seem to be opposite, but in front of Bosie, they have different chemical effects. The brand defined asexual is more "sexual distinction", even if it has a physical gender, but does not emphasize the gender attribute of people in the society.
According to Liu Guangyao, Bosie has achieved large-scale production from supply chain to brand to channel, achieving cost advantage. The brand almost all respects the original design of the designer. Since March this year, the original mechanism has been banned from plagiarism, and the new SKU has reached about 120-150 per month. It saves the dealers from directly facing and letting the profits to the consumers, so that the original design can achieve a fast and low price. The brand's asexual core also saves half of the cost of the two edition of the same version. He said, "Bosie is equivalent to adding the production of men's clothing and women's clothing to the factory." At the same time, the shooting from design, print to the end, no longer requires men and women to separate, and efficiency is doubled.
In April this year, Bosie's first line shop located in Kerry Center, Hangzhou, was also favored by young consumers. The monthly sales of single stores were stable at 500 thousand yuan due to its distinctive built-in red card hit shrine. At present, the brand in Shenzhen, Wuhan, Xi'an, Zhengzhou, Nanchang and Yiwu line shop has also opened, next year the brand plans to set up 80 outlets in the country. It also added Bosie brand branch Gray, children's wear line Bosie Kids and Oriental real wear brand Shi Jin. The future will also open the Glam branch line, which is straight from the Glam Rock era created by David Bowie and Bowie Stardust neutral Stardust. All the developed branches and brands are the product of Bosie's concept of no gender, followed by the core of sexist.
In addition to Bosie and material formula, Na.d, which is more suitable for street fashion brands, has also opened up the market with many categories such as Na.d, sweater and sweater. But Bosie, material formula and Ko Ngai are facing some practical problems, for example, the evaluation of online users often focuses on size problems. No gender fashion has no way to eliminate the different proportion of men and women. How to make size suitable for most people has become a difficult problem. Bosie and Ko Ngai made detailed recommendations for size and visual representation of male and female models. The material formula will issue a trial report, and the words "women's selection" are also marked beside the size. This is also one of the reasons for the rapid laying of Bosie offline stores, allowing consumers to try them out to pick sizes.
But the vast majority of the mass market sex free fashion brands are inseparable from the word "loose" two words. The key to loose clothing is a friendly body shape. It is necessary to increase the sense of clothing design on the basis of "loose". It is very difficult to add tailoring techniques. In order for most consumers to wear upper body, it is more difficult to find a balance between design sense, practicality, tailoring and size.
From concept to retail practice, the development of sex free fashion in China is much faster than we think. But Liu Guangyao believes that the development of Bosie has just passed the pass line, and every link in the supply chain has made considerable room for development: "what we need to do is to achieve the ultimate goal of every style in a sex free fashion." This is not just the status quo of Bosie. All the Chinese sex free fashion brands are still at the initial stage.
But when David Bowie plays the role of a neutral man on the stage, when Yamamoto Teruji puts forward the problem of dressing differences between men and women, they will not think that the young consumers in China, who were once thought to be "male and female inferior", are embracing gender free fashion, embracing multiple elements and inclusiveness, and have also made this vast market.