The Trend Of Fashion Practitioners In China: Where To Go And Where To Go?

Last week, the Business of Fashion Fashion Business Review (hereinafter referred to as BOF) published a text written by Kate Abnett, "Why are young creative talents in the fashion world" fleeing "New York and London"? This paper discusses the phenomenon that designers fled in recent years due to the higher cost of living in New York and London.

On the other side of the ocean, fashion practitioners also have similar migration trends: Beijing, which has always emphasized cultural details, is still the most important luxury market in the mainland. But it is quietly facing the loss of fashion talents. With the shrinking or changing of retail and media industries, more and more fashion industry professionals who aspire to take root in Beijing begin to pfer Shanghai.

In recent years, from headhunting circle to friends circle, "ah? He is not in Beijing?" to Shanghai? "This kind of voice is increasing, and the tone has changed from the initial surprise to the plain narration.

The departure from BoF's "escape from the metropolis" is slightly different. The cost of living in Beijing and Shanghai is the same. The latter is even higher: according to the global cost of living report released in by the The Economist, Tokyo and Tokyo share the eleventh place in the world, while Beijing ranks 31.

So what made the domestic fashion practitioners decide to abandon north south? Is it because Shanghai is the base of many brands in Greater China? Is it the historical charm of the once popular place in the regional impression? Is Shanghai more convenient than Beijing, or is it a utopian refuge for the dissatisfied people in the current situation?

"There are many job opportunities!"

"Why did you move to Shanghai?"

"There are many job opportunities!"

Alice, a department of leather goods brand manager of VM (Visual Merchandising), moved from Shanghai to Beijing 3 years ago. For a simple reason, there are more job opportunities in Shanghai.

"At present, there are more opportunities for Fashion and luxury goods in Shanghai than in Beijing. Although sales are declining, in the past few years, the brand structure in China has basically been integrated with Asia Pacific and Europe, and the management mode is also responsible for the past Asia Pacific region. Until now, mainland companies reported directly to headquarters, leading to VM and Merchandising (commodity Department) requiring local in-house employees, because most of the brand offices are in Shanghai, and naturally more than Beijing.

In Beijing, it is more about selling, or needing to be stationed in the North District business.

The demand for senior positions is mainly from the shopping malls of real estate companies, or department stores such as SKP and Lord of Buddha.

In the past, most of the fashion media and celebrities were in Beijing, so some customers would set up the PR office in North District in Beijing to entrust us to find someone, but now it may be because the budget is shrinking. We now have fewer posts in Beijing than before, "said Linda, who works in headhunting.

Alice can't forget the night of 2010 Winter's I.T Beijing Market in Beijing.

At that time, she moved from Hongkong to Beijing less than a year ago.

"In fact, I seldom came to Beijing before, but I didn't often come on business. But in that year, because of my job, I decided to move from Hongkong to Beijing for a year.

I remember being unfamiliar at that time, but the feeling that Beijing gave me was still very lovely, which was different from most of the mainland cities I visited.

At that time, there were many fashion events in Beijing. The night of the opening of I.T Beijing Market, the whole Sanlitun was lit up. So many people came, you really felt the excitement - which was probably not common in Hongkong at that time.

She also remembered that when he came out of the capital airport, he went straight to the new owner, lien Crawford, the old boutique boutique shop in Hongkong, West Financial Street, Beijing. In the past, the mainland market had failed several times, but when the north of the city rose again in 2007, all the fashionable people in the capital were boiling.

Not only is Lian Carver, but the new light world (now renamed Beijing SKP) opened in April of the same year has also shaken the position of China World Trade Center, Yansha and Seth.

That's the sign that China's luxury and fashion industry has entered the golden age, and it has also led to the introduction of talent flow.

With the holding of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the new life of the ancient city has been opened.

After 9 years, compared with the 2013 and 2014 opening of Shanghai and Chengdu, the shops in Beijing and Financial Street seemed somewhat lonely.

　　上海，自歷史上便是眾多國外奢侈品、時裝品牌在中國的根據地(新中國成立前，連卡佛就以“泰興公司”的名稱揚名上海灘)，但北京的吸引力也不容小覷：從1979年Pierre Cardin在北京民族文化宮的時裝秀、1985年5月6日開幕的“伊夫·圣·洛朗作品回顧展”、1992年位于王府井半島酒店的內地首家Louis Vuitton店鋪開業到過去十余內年Chanel、Prada、Dior在此舉辦的時裝秀等，京城獨有的文化氣質不僅吸引著天南海北的文人墨客，同樣吸引著外來的時裝品牌和相關人才——在早先我們對COMME des GAR?ONS International、精品買手店Dover Street Market的總裁Adrian Joffe先生的采訪中，他也就與I.T Beijing Market店鋪的選址有特別要求：“我和I.T說想在中國內地開Dover Street Market，他們說那就開在上海吧，所有品牌都會先去上海，我說不，要開在北京”。

Zhang Jiapeng, the founder of the RET real estate consulting firm, agrees with Beijing's iconic significance: "for example, you have to make a show, you are at least in the Imperial Palace or in the Great Wall, or where you can represent the country."

But for Shanghai, it doesn't make sense for you to build on the high floor, because Shanghai has no weight in Beijing on the national identity cultural heritage.

The north is clear and the south is beautiful.

But the Imperial Palace and the Great Wall are magnificent, but they are not directly related to ordinary people.

Alice's first home in Beijing was a private house rebuilt by the landlord in the Hutong of the second ring road. "At that time, I found it with another colleague from Hongkong. At that time, I found it very interesting to live in a Hutong. I think this is the characteristic of Beijing." if small alleys and roads are the characteristics of Beijing, then the villa and small streets are the first impression of Shanghai to outsiders.

Compared to Beijing's concentrated business circles and living communities, Shanghai appears to be scattered a lot: "in Shanghai, the location of activities is much more than that in Beijing.

In Beijing, in the event of peak activity, we must rush to those places. Now we are in Shanghai. The scope of selection is much wider, and the traffic and atmosphere of Shanghai are much better than that of Beijing now. We used to choose a little farther away from the venue, or chose some places with a little old Beijing flavor in the second ring road according to customer requirements. The media also complained about how to choose such a place, traffic jam and bad parking, and it took more than an hour to get to the loop.

Tracy, who worked for a PR agency, moved from Beijing to Shanghai last year, just like Alice, where there are more job opportunities.

Moreover, she has lived in Beijing for ten years, and has long been envious of Shanghai's convenience.

"I used to feel like staying there for a long time. Besides, I am a northerner. Even if the northerners have never been to Shanghai, they also believe that Shanghai is excluded from the outside. But Shanghai is more convenient than Beijing to live. It is a fact that Beijing is spent in all kinds of app.

Taking a taxi in Shanghai, Uber and didi have the opportunity to complain about why Huaihailu Road is so blocked, because my mobile phone number has not changed, or Beijing, so they sometimes ask me if Beijing is so blocked up, and I laugh in my heart. I said you should think Shanghai is also a blockage, so you must have a mental illness in Beijing.

I now live near the company, although the rent is more expensive, but the pportation cost has saved a lot. I can walk to work every day, walking along Julu road and Changshu Road, looking around the small shops and trees on the street, feeling more comfortable than in Beijing.

Besides, Shanghai is not as big as Beijing. On weekends, I can have a meal near a restaurant and friends in Anfu Road, Wuyuan Road, or buy some food in downstairs dishes. I don't feel like living in Shanghai, so I need to buy a car.

And buying cars in Shanghai, although that piece of iron is expensive to explode, the restrictions on foreign cars are not as harsh as Beijing.

No matter what your purpose is, whether the foreign license plate is recognized by the state as a legitimate existence, why should be so extreme in Beijing? "

Before moving to Shanghai, Tracy completed her pition from a new workplace to a backbone in Beijing. She experienced a change from the early taxi to the subway and the bus to the Internet. "Without Uber and dripping, I think I would leave Beijing earlier."

Beijing wants to live decent (decent) too difficult, because not only depends on how much money you earn - I Yaohao bought a car for four years, buying a bite can only buy five suburbs outside; rent you can live closer, but the rent is higher and higher, although Shanghai rent is not cheap or even more expensive, but at the same price, it is better than Beijing's conditions.

Although the hot housing market at the beginning of the year has given Shanghai the same policy as Beijing that foreigners need to pay five years of social security tax in succession to obtain the qualification for housing purchase (in the past two years), Tracy said that she would not consider buying a house in a short time. She left the Beijing and suddenly realized that she would not go anywhere later.

Tracy walks on the road to Changle, although according to her friends in Shanghai, this place has no longer existed in the past, but she does not care: "many people say Shanghai is more popular than Beijing, but this is only a general concept.

Before, in Beijing, we all look forward to sunny days. After all, Shanghai is southern and cloudy, and it is not used to the cloudy days. When it is sunny, it is not as bright as Beijing. When it rains on rainy days, it rains more and more. But for a long time, I find it quite like this cloudy day. It makes people feel quieter and walking in the street. The most heard is the doorbell of Rosen and the family convenience store. I once thought I would not be able to put everything in Beijing, but now it seems that there is nothing to put down, so long as life is still going on.

From Tracy's photos of friends circle and Instagram, she is more adorable than ever before, and the location of photos is mostly under the phoenix tree and the old house on the street. Maybe this is called "North clear, South Yin Qiao".

"I'm used to drinking salted soya bean milk with dried shrimps."

In today's China, it is almost impossible to distinguish absolute differences between cities.

Whether North or south, ugly shop signs, yellow fried chicken rice with a red burst, chain restaurants and shopping centers make homogenization more serious among cities.

The only difference seems to be in the local diet. Huang Zhe, a graphic designer from Beijing, used to drink the original soya bean milk from childhood. However, when she moved to Shanghai for less than a year, she used to use salted soybean milk, bread sticks and rice balls. "She used to travel to Shanghai, but she went to a hotel to go to a client company. She ate most of the roast meat and grass circles in old Jishi and Paul restaurants.

Now that I moved in, and my colleague took me to breakfast, I discovered that Shanghai's Salted soya bean milk needs shrimps and pepper.

The big cake they say is not the same as the Beijing pie.

I still love rice balls, the kind of salt and duck eggs.

Maybe I am a food buyer. The most direct and immediate impression of Shanghai is that I eat better than Beijing. Although Beijing is my home, it is true that Beijing people live very rough, and the restaurants in Beijing are also oily and tasty.

Huang Zhe used to be a deputy director of art in a fashion magazine. Last year, he decided to resign. When several former colleagues and friends who moved to Shanghai earlier, the real Beijing people left their hometown.

"A few friends and I want to open a Lifestyle buyer shop. Of course, we want to start in Beijing, but we also know that with Beijing's street business and atmosphere, it is unlikely to do so.

The drum tower that I used to go to when I was a kid, the place that these young people like to go to Xinjiekou, now is not half dead and alive, or they are completely yellow.

In addition to the bad weather and the old haze, people are reluctant to walk outside. It is cold in winter, so the next 8-9 years of the actual business cycle will take place in the next month. The basic crowd can only enter the shopping malls. But the business circle in Beijing is mainly concentrated in the East, and the crowd is mostly Sanlitun, Da Wang Road and the world trade scale.

Sanlitun is the first choice, but the rent and the qualification requirements for merchants are too high. In the new light and the world trade scale, there is no such atmosphere as our location shop.

Six months before Huang zhe left Beijing, I wandered around the Xinjiekou area with him. It used to be one of the places where Beijing youth culture was gathered. There were a lot of stores selling and selling discs, importing Walkman, audio equipment and magazine books, but now there is only a dilapidated scene after the pformation of the government.

Looking at the South Street of Xinjiekou now, Huang Zhe and I sigh that such a golden old city area looks different from that of the small town. Although Hua Tian Chuan Chuan, known as one of the best cool noodle houses in Beijing, is still buzzing, what is more harsh is the cry of the salesperson of the JEANSWEST shop, and the excited female voice from the loudspeaker: "good news and good news. Our company has closed five yuan, five yuan and one piece because of bad management."

"Really funny, all went bankrupt. Good news."

Huang zhe sneered.

As a native of Beijing, he once had an infinite sense of pride. "I think every Beijing people are a little bit like this. Especially before and after the Olympic Games, the changes in Beijing are particularly large. Yintai, Xinguang, Sanlitun are all very cosmopolitan, and people in the south of the sea go to this place.

But I think some people began to leave Beijing after the haze began to start. Haze is just an introduction. The key is that Beijing is not very livable at present.

I used to be very annoyed with those outsiders who were always picking on Beijing's problems. It's too bad that you shouldn't depend on them. But where are you going? Ah, but now I'm not so extreme. The contradiction between outsiders and locals is just the surface. It's the most vexing point. If we continue to fight this meaningless fight, it can only be worse. We can't just stop around the old Beijing, and the role of Beijing is too much.

Huang Zhe was not optimistic about the integration of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, because Rome was not built in a day, and Beijing was not dispersed one day.

In Shanghai, Huang's favorite place is Closing Ceremony, an independent bookstore near Urumqi Road: "one of their bosses moved from Beijing to Shanghai."

Huang Zhe sighs that Beijing, as the capital of culture, now has such a label: "it's not that you go to the Imperial Palace and go to the Tsinghua University to visit a circle to leave a picture. You can say you feel the cultural atmosphere. Everyone says Beijing is better than Shanghai to start a business, but I don't want to invest in anything and do not want to make any Internet, so we want to do a business."

Huang recalled a scene in a well-known cafe in Beijing. Almost 1/3 of the customers shouted that their projects would become the next Alibaba, and that they would be worth more than ten billion dollars next year.

In the eyes of outsiders, Beijing children will not leave their hometown very easily. Huang Zhe said he had never thought of leaving Beijing before he was 32 years old: "I have a house in Beijing, a car, according to my friends, I am a little master in Beijing.

But I don't like this title more and more. One day I drove to listen to the radio. The guest was a Beijing native who told Beijing snacks. I didn't know why I was very disgusted. Maybe it was because of his arrogant and ruffled tone. Now Beijing culture is no longer the kind of soil I am a little lazy and a little bit bullying, but my heart is very good.

In short, I do not want to die because I am a symbol of Beijing people.

However, Huang Zhe also stressed to me that in his view, there are such problems in Beijing, but many of them are just dissatisfied with their own situation, instead of hoping to be entrusted to a more rational planning city: "no Utopia is there, so it is not that you leave Beijing, your problems will be solved."

Huang Zhe and several partners are still looking for suitable locations and shops in Shanghai. Although the rent is high, they believe that the environment here is more suitable for retail than Beijing, and Shanghai young people have a better acceptance of the new brands.

They are now closely monitoring the Shanghai government's pformation plan for the fashionable shops and restaurants in Wuyuan Road, Yongkang road and so on: "I hope we will not feel like Beijing, and we will feel a bit disappointed."

The sun rises and falls in the East and West, but the end of life is not in the north and south.

Among his partners, Mr. Luo, a Singaporean who has lived in Beijing for fifteen years.

In 2000, he came to Beijing and was responsible for the business of the shopping center under a real estate project. He didn't expect to grow up with black hair, but now he has a white hair on his head.

"For a long time, the impression that I and my friends have on China all come from Beijing.

I don't like Shanghai, because even people who lived in Shanghai for a long time came back to tell us that No, Shanghai is too impetuous, Shanghai people are also very concerned about it, Beijing is better, Beijing life is very comfortable, the rhythm is not so fast, and there is a humanistic atmosphere.

I saw Beijing in a documentary. I remember the picture of the old lady playing Tai Chi, and a piece of music. I was very fond of looking around, and later I knew it was called "Honghu waves."

Since ancient times, the contest between China and the North has always existed.

Under the geographical bias, Shanghai people are always carrying negative labels for all kinds of things.

The most ridiculous comment of Mr. Luo on the people of Shanghai is from a Italy colleague: "he said that Shanghai people do not care what others say about them, but the happier they feel, the more glorious they feel."

"Singapore is a place of multiple integration, so I personally do not particularly listen to this.

But in Beijing for so long, I find that Beijing people are not so straightforward. In this era, we should not treat the people of a place too much.

Similarly, I do not think Shanghai people are as strong as people say, but my little girl will tell me that the earrings are popular in Shanghai, which makes me feel a bit like Parisians.

You don't want to see so many westernized cafes and small shops selling Tom Dixon. Shanghai's current sense of form is already there, but there is not much more inside, and there is still a gap between Tokyo and Hongkong.

But on the thirty day of the year, the streets of Shanghai were almost empty. Mr. Luo made an appointment to take the taxi to the airport and prepare for a holiday in Spain. When the driver got on the bus, he greeted him with Shanghai dialect Putonghua: "good Spring Festival, sir."

Mr. Luo said he was a bit surprised at that moment.

"I will not just look at the data of GDP to measure a city, these data have reference significance, but every time I go to a place, I will spend a long time observing the people on the street, listening to their chat in restaurants and cafes, and chatting with people who live there. Not everyone who does business will agree, but I believe my intuition is a gift from God."

Regarding the difference between Beijing and Shanghai in the fashion industry, Mr. Luo does not think Beijing is vulnerable: "for luxury goods, Beijing still has considerable advantages, for example, SKP is still the most important shopping mall. Beijing's consumption of high-grade jewellery and watches is stronger than that of Shanghai, but Beijing has indeed made small progress.

Acceptance.

For practitioners or entrepreneurs, opportunities are more diversified and natural.

Several of my designer friends moved to Shanghai, not because of the imagination.

Supply and cost have more advantages than Beijing. Most of them are out of the industrial and cultural environment in Shanghai. They are more lively and more likely to follow. This also leads to fashion in China, where only Beijing and Shanghai can go, and Shanghai is obviously better.

But it is also necessary to be vigilant that this new or lively continuity usually soon leads to another homogenization.

Like Mr. Huang Zhe, Mr. Luo has not been too emotional about leaving Beijing: "where suitable business is, we will do it."

Now many people in Beijing originally chose to work in Shanghai, too. But this is not a paradise. Apart from geographical characteristics, the most important thing is to look at your own skills. "Smart women can't cook rice without rice, but you can't just complain about rice."

"Will you miss life in Beijing, or consider coming back?"

All respondents answered the same question? Even Huang Zhe, a native of Beijing, is no exception: "in Beijing, or in"

The place is not important; I will not shout slogans such as I LOVE SHANGHAI, nor can my accent become a Shanghai style Putonghua. I only know that I am here at the moment, as I do in any way in the world, to abide by what I should abide by and do what I should do.

In Beijing this year, the situation of persistent haze has improved.

When the sky is clear, sunshine can also be as bright as memory, shining in the bustling crowd. Even men and women who rush into the subway and office buildings can enjoy only a brief sunshine, and they will also be delighted with the good weather.

For those who left Beijing for Shanghai, the sun nourished their past, but they did not leave Beijing in an escape and abandonment attitude. Dreams realized or unfulfilled in Beijing were no longer important, nor was Shanghai another Beijing in their hearts.