Inside And Outside Wacoal: Will Asian Women Ushered In "Underwear Freedom"?

"Every woman has the right to feel sexy," says Rihanna, a bad girl. (Rihanna) The 31 year old, with her Savage x Fenty underwear series, quickly set up a new style of inclusiveness and diversity in the industry. It is challenging and reshaping people's inherent cognitive impression of "sexy".
Represented by Wei MI, no matter in terms of product design or advertisement presentation, many lingerie brands have continuously exported tangible appearance standards and intangible value guidance to people through the help of media. "Good figure" is limited by the figures, circumference and size of figures. The male perspective successfully led to the definition of beauty by women.
Research from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom shows that when women are exposed to more beautiful models, their satisfaction with their physique will decrease, and they will be forced to pursue the "ideal body" described by the media. Even a crowd of Red Net began to sell body sculpting bra to help women create a concave convex S curve. This bra was also popular in nineteenth Century. Improper use will have the risk of rib deformation and abdominal visceral displacement.
Rihanna is just doing underwear that can really make women feel comfortable mentally and physically. "I'm not going to make history," she said. In fact, nearly 200 million people have paid for Amazon's Savage x Fenty show in September this year. This is not only due to Rihanna's high popularity, but also because of the diversity and tolerance of the brand in terms of model appointment and form of performance. Mama Cax, a Haiti American model, is one of the representatives. Her right leg underwent amputation because of the proliferation of bone cancer cells.
Thanks to the development of various affirmative movements and the popularization of ideas, the social environment in the European and American regions is more tolerant to women than before. In May of this year, Chika Oranika, the big rapper, was invited to shoot the latest brand of sports underwear for Calvin Klein and released the #MyCalvin theme video on YouTube. When advertising is launched, a lot of resentment and criticism come, but what corresponds to it is people's admiration for Chika's honesty and bravery in front of the camera.
Asian women are relatively conservative. In the past, "sexy marketing" was not very cold. Nowadays, European and American Aesthetics is becoming more and more diverse. Asian women are also striving to achieve "underwear freedom" though there is still a long way to go.
Re Yizha and Shirley, two female artists who did not wear underwear, aroused heated debate in China and South Korea online. The former was overwhelmed by negative comments and forwarded by micro-blog netizens, so that they decided to seek help from lawyers. The latter committed suicide at home in October of this year because of depression. But in Japan, there are also popular celebrities like Watanabe Naomi, who are intrepid and humiliating. In the early November release of the American reality show "Queer Eye" in Japan, Watanabe used his own experience to encourage a girl who had been bullied in his schooldays and was extremely self assured about her figure. "I've been brainwashed, too thin to be treated as a woman or even a normal person," she said. "But I find that some people actually like me."
Tmall's official data show that "comfort" has become the primary consideration for Chinese women to choose underwear at present. However, it is still unavoidable that the deep-rooted conservative concept has potential constraints and direct intervention on women's self-expression and outward appearance. According to NetEase's more than 25 thousand underwear survey for Jingdong mall, more than 20 thousand underwear has emphasized the word "gather" in the main features, which shows that many businessmen still think that the pursuit of body shape is the biggest motivation for women to buy underwear.
Diversification of the aesthetic concept has been quietly generated in the consumer group, but the more traditional ideas of the old business does not seem to keep up with the time, this disconnection has led to the decline as difficult as Victoria.
Once known as "national underwear", the urban beauty was once the most popular brand in China's underwear market in 2016. However, it has been frustrated for many years. The profit forecast in the first half of this year has dropped by more than 80%, and the market value has evaporated about 13 billion 500 million yuan in the past 4 years. Similarly, the Hongkong underwear brand, an Li Fang, is also in distress. Its current number of physical retail outlets has decreased by 161 compared with the beginning of this year.
At the same time, many new underwear brands, represented by inside and outside, are rising rapidly.
In recent years, with the awakening of feminine consciousness and the recognition of self acceptance, recognition and respect, women's consumption concept has also been changed. This is best reflected in the structural explosion of comfort without steel ring underwear. People no longer pay much attention to such things as "gathering" and "shaping". Instead, they pay more attention to the pursuit of freedom of body and mind, and spend more freely and comfortably on their own feelings, "Liu Xiao Lu, the founder of underwear home furnishing brand Neiwai, told BoF.
According to AI media's "2019-2021 year global underwear industry performance and China underwear market monitoring big data report", the global underwear market will reach US $450 billion this year. Women's underwear is still the most important market, accounting for more than 60% of the total market size. The size of China's underwear market will be close to 200 billion yuan, and the growth rate will be even more obvious.
In a particularly large market environment, the C round of financing was completed 150 million months ago, half a month ago. As a brand starting from the Internet, Tmall is now the top 5 in Tmall underwear category one, expanding its offline stores to 60, and plans to open its first overseas store in the United States next year. With the continuous exploration of the market without underwear, the inside and outside has gradually expanded into a lifestyle brand that includes men's pajamas casual wear, sports and leisure, home fragrance and so on.
The success of both inside and outside is precisely because it took a step forward when it was founded in 2012, and accurately grasped the change of women's underwear demand. "Women's customers' concept of" Yue Ren "is constantly deepening, so we will pay more attention to the comfort of materials and styles in underwear design, so as to meet the functional needs of women of different shapes. At the same time, underwear will gradually break away from the traditional gender perspective, encourage women to face up to their physical desires and make life choices in a more free way, "Liu Xiaolu said.
With the expansion of the brand scale, both inside and outside are "changing" to realize user increment. Facing the more diversified crowd is the next strategic development direction. Its R & D department has worked with a Japanese lingerie company to develop new products for large yards based on the form of steel rings, and has launched the Petite young girl line and Active professional sports line.
Another online market worthy of note is the D2C brand "toffee pie", which focuses on large cup women. In the past conservative impression, Chinese women are shy to express and discuss their physical shape, especially those with large breasts. They rarely find Morton's aesthetic and size appropriate underwear in the market. The "toffee pie" has emerged in some large underwear underwear communities that have been active on the Internet for many years. Because of the trouble of sea fishing, the community has begun to discuss whether it can build a brand to solve this problem. Finally, in the community, "Michael" and "big white A Pu" together create a "toffee pie" that is suitable for different large cups and subdivision of chest type women. From the "bean paste" to "know" and other more vertical social media platforms, "toffee pie" is not only committed to science popularization, but also will conduct on-site guidance and experience online. After winning only 1 million 800 thousand yuan of seed investment in 2016, the company has been operating so far.
Coincidentally, Wacoal, a Japanese traditional bra maker, also completed the acquisition of Lively, an online underwear startups, earlier in the US. The latter was founded in 2015, aiming at the young market, famous for its thin underwear with no steel ring, and entering the official website. It can also see different models in displaying its latest product design.
It is not advisable to emphasize that "sexy is feminine". Only by understanding the real needs of women consumers and changing the trend of catching up, can we continue to expand our business. As for women themselves, as Liu Xiaolu said, "women who are able to face up to sex and comfort must be relaxed and cheerful."