Along with Dior's silence, a Chinese dress booms

Hello!

Here and there, let’s look everywhere.

Transformed from museum collections to fashionable items, a kind of clothing which was popular in China hundreds of years ago is making a comeback.

What we are talking about, is horse face skirt.

Flaming enthusiasm for the skirt can be easily observed from clothing and fabric factories. This week, China Youth Daily reported that in Cao County, Shandong province, factory owners are worried about not being able to buy enough fabric. A headphone enterprise, which got the foresight, bet on making horse face skirts last year. In the fabric production base, Xucun Town, Zhejiang province, the machines used to produce fabrics for curtains, are now making fabrics for horse face skirts. Even so, they still can't meet orders.

On Chinese social media, some netizens said “thanks a lot” to Dior, the French luxury house.

Dior launched a skirt priced at 29,000 yuan in the summer of 2022. The house claimed that the product used “Dior’s hallmark silhouette" and was "brand new”. Traditional Chinese clothing enthusiasts found it very similar to the horse face skirt, and accused the designers of plagiarism.

Worrying of Dior's actions misleading the true origin of horse face skirts, some marchers held a protest outside Dior's headquarters in Paris with slogan "Dior, Stop Cultural Appropriation.”

Dior has never responded to the incident. However, the event had brought more attention to the horse face skirt. A business owner in Zhejiang said that before 2022, the horse face skirt was still a niche market. This incident brought it to the people’s attention.

After the incident, Hanfu enthusiasts promote the horse face skirt with even more effort. Some videos show that they travel around the world, wearing horse face skirts, and tell local people, “It’s from China!”

The horse face skirt was selected as one of the "Top 10 Products of the Year 2023" by Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao.

For centuries, the horse face skirt was a daily wear for the Chinese folks and royals. More than 40 years ago, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, was wearing a horse face skirt on a certain occasion. Nowadays, the trend has returned.

Hanfu enthusiasts never forget Dior. On Feb 24, a netizen revealed that almost everyone around her has a horse face skirt, and she believes, to some extent, the enthusiasts are good to thank the people who discovered Dior's plagiarism. What’s more, "we really need to be good at discovering the beautiful things in our country."

中国青年报社出品

文案：张致远 卞心怡 傅瑞

剪辑： 郭扬（实习生）

数智主播生成：程璨

视觉包装：张岩 李晗

数据来源：中国青年报社“青年语料库”（记者 蒋雨彤 邢婷）

图片/视频来源：中国国家博物馆 孔子博物馆 视觉中国 微博（博主：法国漂）