Investigation On "False Down" Disorder Of Down Jacket

As the weather turns cold, down jackets begin to appear on the annual clothing stage. However, "the cashmere content of RMB 89 down jacket is basically 0", "the police have seized more than 70000 'fake down jackets'", "the media has exposed down products filled with silk"... Recently, many topics related to down products have frequently hit the Internet, and the industry quality problem has been pushed to the forefront.

Recently, the reporter came to a down e-commerce entrepreneurship park in Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province. Four enterprises here were recently exposed to replace "down" with "silk", and the tag was falsely labeled with material, suspected of shoddy. After visiting a number of clothing stores in the park, the reporter found that the downy clothes on sale in the stores had completely updated the tag logo to meet the requirements of the new national standard, and some clothing tags were marked with "feather silk" and "down silk" fillers.

What is "feather silk" and "down silk", and why is the price difference several times higher than that of down? According to experts in the industry, "feather silk" and "down silk" are commonly known as "flying silk", which can be used as fillers for down jackets together with the "down" on the belly of ducks and geese. "Fleece" refers to the fine and soft fluff covered by hair pieces on the surface layer of birds, which is generally in the shape of a dandelion umbrella, relatively loose, and has good warmth retention; Feather silk and down silk are monofilaments falling off from the root of down or hair piece, with strong smell, easy to drill down and relatively poor warmth retention.

Previously, the old national standard "Down Garment" used for down clothing in China used "down content" as the indicator, and down silk and feather silk can be included in the down content, for example, 90% down content, the actual down content is only 81%, and the rest can be matched with "fly silk" with lower cost. On April 1, 2022, China implemented a new national standard, Down Garments, which stipulates that down garments are no longer marked with down content, but should be marked with the type, down content and down filling, and the "down content" of down garment filling should not be less than 50%.

Qualified feather silk and down silk products can be sold legally as long as they are clearly and accurately labeled. However, some businesses, in order to gain more benefits, falsely label them as down jackets for sale, which infringes consumers' right to know. In addition, due to the lack of clear "feather silk/cashmere silk clothing" category options on the e-commerce platform, some businesses take this loophole to sell feather silk and cashmere silk clothing on the shelves as down clothing, misleading consumers. Industry insiders appeal that the categories of cold proof and warm keeping clothing should be further subdivided, and the national quality standards of the industry should be formulated as soon as possible to avoid the market being shoddy and the good mixed with the bad.

Relevant experts believe that with the increase of consumers' demand for quality and personalization, the down industry is facing double challenges of brand competition and transformation and upgrading. Recently, the group standard of China's Down Product Quality Grading was officially released, hoping to promote the overall improvement of down product quality and provide strong support for the healthy development of the industry through a scientific grading system. (Reporter: Peng Jing, Huang Hesun)

(Source: Xinhua News Agency)