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Foreign Designers Join In The Capital Of Men'S Clothing -- Jinjiang

2014/1/6 15:50:00 54

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Foreign Designers Men'S Capital Jinjiang

Where is the next battleground of China's clothing industry? In the wardrobe of middle-aged men in the three or four tier cities of China, some local men's wear brands are trying to remind them of how to dress elegantly and stylish.

So a group of foreign designers from London, New York, Tokyo and other fashion frontiers joined in Jinjiang, China's menswear capital.

"freelancers and small business owners in three line cities, aged between 30 and 40, are usually married, with one to two children. There are four or five nights in the week for entertainment and dinner, beer belly is convex, entertainment is like playing mahjong and singing hall."

Local men's clothing brand Li Lang describes his target consumer group in a market research.

this group of people often focus on career and family.

What is elegance and fashion? They have no time to think about it.

So buying clothes is a fairly simple task for them to walk into several men's clothing shops with high popularity in the local area, so that the salesmen recommend the latest and most obvious fabrics and styles in this season.

in the eyes of a fashion designer, this group of people may be "local tyrants" who have a certain ability to consume but have no aesthetic standards.

They prefer new fabrics such as cotton, hemp, silk, wool and other natural fabrics. For Western-style clothes, they prefer business and steady flat collar with more elegant and elegant gun barges.

in fact, they do not have much room for choice. Compared with women's wear, men's clothing has always been more monotonous in brands, styles and fabrics.

Among the mainstream menswear brands, such as Li Lang, seven wolves and Jin Ba, almost all of them are in Jinjiang, Fujian. They have learnt from each other in their early business experience, fabric sources, design ideas and marketing methods.

2012, the size of China's men's wear market has exceeded 500 billion yuan, and the consumption concept of men is still escalating. Men's dressing must also be paid attention to. This concept is slowly infiltrating from the first tier cities to all parts of the country.

"Local tyrants" have more ideas about what clothes they are suitable for.

But most of the local men's wear brands are still in a relatively extensive "wholesale era" without establishing brand characteristics that distinguish them from peers.

Many foreign brands have been able to encroach on men's market share in smaller cities in China.

"how to make your own unique style has become the top priority," Wang Liangxing, CEO of the lon Lang group, told the "financial world" weekly.

In 2012, Li began to invest heavily in foreign designers who had worked for international brands such as Giorgio Armani, Levi and s to come to Jinjiang headquarters of the company.

"A good brand should be: the fabric is unique to me, the design is unique to me, and the story is unique to me."

Wang Liangxing said.

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in the office of "high-end series design director" on a door board, the "marinated egg" is sitting on a black leather sofa and skillfully using a kung fu tea set to make tea. He will put the tea bowl in .

filtration of the tea soup, then pour it into the small and delicate porcelain cup.

There is a tea drinking style in Southern Fujian, and almost every office in Le Lang has such a set of professional equipment.

the name "Lucio" Castro Castro is a member of the foreign designer team of LL, and was previously the global creative director of Armani Exchange.

The "marinated egg" is the nickname of his current Chinese colleague based on the pronunciation of the English name.

It's hard to imagine half a year ago that he was still living in New York during the day, taking the subway to work and attending various fashion parties in the evening.

"I drink almost every day in New York, and now I drink tea every day."

the whole wall of the sofa is full of pictures. It seems to be a mess. Actually, it is telling a theme story.

"This is the high-end garment series I designed for the autumn and winter of 2014. The theme is" the Silk Road ", Lucio said. The whole series is divided into several chapters by the dust yellow, emerald green and red colors.

For the first time, he came to work in China, and it was easy to get inspiration from Chinese history and culture.

whether a clothing brand has a series of designs, which is clear from the display of stores and showcases.

The biggest reason for the homogenization of Chinese men's clothing market is that the design is more scattered and can not tell the unique story of their brands clearly.

"I hope that in the future, the design of Lon can be unified to a specific theme and color system, and there is a more standardized process."

Rafal Antos, creative director of Lai Lang said.

He used to be the design director of brands such as Giorgio Armani and GAP, and now he is responsible for directing the designer team.

in order to introduce the latest design ideas in the world, Rafal spent 2/3 of his time working in London and other places in order to get closer to the tidal front.

Every two months, he will take 20 days to stay at the headquarters of Jinjiang, to share the latest trend and deploy the designer team in the next quarter.

On the day of the interview, P has just arrived in Jinjiang and has begun a new round of work.

On the side of the office, there are plastic models and piles of fabric. In the middle of the room, hangers are hung up in the middle of the room. The scene is cluttered and busy, as if the other side of the wall is the T station that lights up.

The walls are full of his design draft, and the style of suits and trousers is generally narrow and narrow, with a strong British style.

Rafal bent over and turned over to the cloth carefully, thinking about what kind of fabric for the next season's dress.

He and Lucio two people are "fabric control", love cotton, linen, silk, wool and other natural materials.

In fact, in addition to changing the design process and establishing a series of design patterns, the introduction of more novel and unique fabrics for the Li Lang is another key work for foreign designers.

"The design and texture of men's clothing depends largely on the fabric."

Lucio said.

at present, there are a small number of imported fabrics, but the proportion is still increasing, but most of them are still purchased from several local suppliers.

The problem is that these big suppliers also provide fabrics for other men's wear brands, and their competitors can hardly make their fabrics unique.

"Native fabrics also have very high quality, different designs will have the most suitable material, and I hope there will be more applications of natural materials in the future."

Rafal says natural fabrics make clothes look more elegant and classic.

of course, the greatest ambition of foreigners designers is to let men wearing Llie products gradually realize that men's clothing is actually a fun learning.

For example, can middle aged men's jeans be the middle waist and straight tube style? No, it can also be low waist, narrow mouthpiece, or even Skinny (tight pants).

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"P >"! --EndFragment--! "Has been the design director of the Levi" s Tokyo design center ".

In the new season's design, Li Lang will launch the five basic styles of low waist and varying degrees of closure, like the professional jeans brand like Levi s.

How difficult will this revolution be driven by foreign designers? the answer is obvious. It is obvious that the men in the three cities will now put their legs into low waist and tight jeans.

The gap between the ideal of designers and the reality of the Chinese market is doomed to be an ultimate contradiction.

When p decided to start using foreign designers, Wang Liangxing realized that it would take time to fill the gap, so he did not set clear performance targets for foreign designers in the short term.

But at the end of August this year, the spring and summer order meeting in 2014 still gave him a heavy blow.

Dealers from various provinces and cities in the country are trying to pick out styles in a mountain of clothes. Less than 10% of the total value is from foreign designers, which is far from expected.

this undoubtedly brings more pressure to the foreign team.

Lucio is the newest member of the team. He is away from the metropolis and coming to different countries and does not make him feel uncomfortable in daily life. Instead, he enjoys the simple life of office, apartment and gymnasium. Although he can not make more friends in Chinese, he still stares at the street in Jinjiang as an alien.

His biggest concern is whether he can make some changes for Li, and whether he can keep pace with the trend in Jinjiang. After all, most of the clothing brand design centers are located in the international metropolis of talents gathered in the fashion industry.

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"it takes a lot of heart to do this."

< a href= "http://www.91se91.com/pioneer/" > Wang Liang Xing < /a > speak while smoking cigars.

In his office hung a wooden frame of about 1.5 meters, multiplied by 2 meters, with a blank sheet of paper in it.

Wang Liangxing has the common characteristics of private entrepreneurs in Southern Fujian, which is bold in common sense.

in fact, Li Lang and its competitors, including seven wolves and Jin Ba, began to cooperate with foreign designers many years ago, but most of them were limited to buying their design draft or inventing short term communication.

Let foreign designers stay in the company, this is the first time in the local men's wear brand.

Enterprises between P and Jinjiang often follow each other's successful experiences. For example, in the early stage of advertising in CCTV, one of them first went ahead and got good results.

"Seven wolves and other brands also know that Lee has invited foreign designers, but they are still watching."

One industry insider said.

The reason is very simple. In the more than 100 team designers, the average labor cost of the 7 foreign members is much higher than that of the local designers, for example, each of them has a plation. However, the design of this creative work can not be reflected in the hard sales data in the short term.

In addition, talented designers often mean a distinct personality and are more difficult to manage.

P is not just a competitor, but also all the staff of lelan, especially the local designer team. On the one hand, they are secretly learning skills, and to some extent, they are "waiting for foreigners to get embarrassed".

Chinese and foreign designers belong to one team in name, but in practice they are still two track systems.

for example, Rafal Antos hopes to implement the international common design process in the whole team, that is, start with the designer, first determine the theme and color system, then choose the fabric and find the supplier.

But at present, the Chinese design team still insists on the previous design process, that is, to finalize the supplier and fabric, and then design it on the basis of it, sometimes even directly using the type version issued by the fabric supplier.

The two process is the opposite, and the latter is the root cause of homogeneity of Chinese men's wear brand products.

The design process of "P" internationalization looks beautiful, but why is it difficult to carry it out? Because it will fundamentally disrupt the interest relationship between fabric suppliers and local designers in years of cooperation.

"Designers decide the selection of fabrics. In this process, it is very likely that there will be" hidden rules ".

The industry insiders said.

Wang Liangxing knows all these problems, but at present, P can only develop naturally.

The risk of "major surgery" is that it may cause instability in the local design team, and at present, the design backbone is still these people.

"Domestic designers know more about the market, and when they run in with foreign designers, they can learn from each other and inspire each other."

The king said.

Another real dilemma is that he urgently needs a strong left and right hand to integrate Chinese and foreign designer teams to give full play to their respective strengths.

But it is hard to find people who want to design and manage.

P, the dealer and buyer team, feel that the concept of foreign designers is good, and expect their works. But once they arrive at the order, they are still unwilling to take risks in a short time.

Of course, on the one hand, the reason why foreign designers do not understand the Chinese market and their style is not accurate enough.

But the more important reason is that the company is still a wholesale clothing enterprise. Most of the more than 3000 stores in China are franchisees. The leading force of the brand is not strong enough. The most direct expression is that there is no way to stipulate a high percentage of the money in the order meeting, like the brands like ZARA and Nike.

The possible consequence of the free selection of dealers is that the design with themes and series has been completely disrupted, and the efforts of foreign designers have been buried. It is difficult for them to leave a deep brand impression in the minds of consumers after their products are displayed on the storefront.

with the longer and longer working hours in the "a href=" http://www.91se91.com/news/index_c.asp "Li Lang" /a, through the cooperation with the local team, listening to the dealers' buying advice, and going to the stores in various cities, the "foreigners" designers are also getting to know the consumer groups they are facing slowly.

At the end of a sampling conference, designers responsible for various categories of dialogue with buyers, usually designers spend 10 minutes to introduce design ideas, the next 50 minutes are listening to buyers to talk about market feedback.

"consumers like pparent fabrics very much."

Lucio said, which surprised him.

Rafal thinks that the Chinese market is completely different from the European market. "Change is too strong a word. We are just making some adjustments so that the design style of Li Lang is more continuous. I believe that as long as the design is good, consumers will slowly accept it."

In P, Wang Liangxing is probably the strongest supporter of the foreign designer's experiment.

In his early 50 years, he still preferred clothes with bright colors, young fashion, and his hair. His favorite hobby was to buy the latest fashion clothes for the first time. He was very active inside the company and was good at promoting the atmosphere.

In order to make the working environment more "foreign style", Li Lang also equipped with swimming pool, gym and other facilities.

His latest "toy" is a newly opened old cafe on the first floor of the office building. This is the restaurant that Li Lang specially invited Xiamen's coffee chain brand to cooperate in the company.

in order to give the foreign designers better space to play, Wang Liangxing is also considering setting up a special exhibition hall for them at the later order meeting, and making sure that a certain proportion of the money must be agreed with the dealer, so that the design results can be better displayed.

Of course, the market finally has the final say. "Whoever wins the market will win."

Wang Liangxing said.