Guangzhou Day 5
Today we have a half day free time where my friends and I woke up at 10AM to experience local dim sum. We walked about 10-15 minutes away from our hotel to find a good dim sum place and found one with excitement.
Then after filling up we walked back to the hotel to meet with the rest of our classmates and lecturer to go for a talk at BlueSpace. Our talk was supposed to be at 3 but there were minor mishaps along the way as we got lost and went to the wrong place however we are lucky to have our Chinese friends because they made our journey easier day by day. We reached BlueSpace around 4:00PM and we met Chris who works in BlueSpace where he does merchandising for the company. BlueSpace is a place where they build platform for fashion communication with employees that works in the fashion industry for many years. We get to learn that the Chinese fashion market changes in demand all the time because of fast living. The Chinese in China used to only care about clothes functionality but now they consider the beauty and feeling of having new clothes from around the world, especially western brands. On top of that, for the people in China, clothes is now a social status and a way for them to express themselves. However, overconsumption is one of the issue in China these days as people do not really wear or use everything they buy.
The biggest problem in China’s fashion industry is that, the brands have too much stocks. They have billions of stocks more than their own pro t. The brands in China needs to know exactly who their consumers are and their interests. The people in BlueSpace do have a lot of knowledge regarding China’s market and they have worked with Calvin Klein and Prada to discuss about creativity.
Tony the CEO of Fashion Plus has no background about fashion but he loves fashion and design.
On top of that, we get to have a talk with Celine, and she works with the brand named Exception. She used to work in the womenswear department but she shifted to menswear because she knows there are a lot more opportunities to come for menswear brands in the fashion industry. Brands in China are slowly shifting their focus and branding strategies accordingly on to the millennials.
Furthermore, I learnt that the differences between Shanghai Fashion Week vs. Guang- zhou Fashion week:
Shanghai Fashion Week is more on big designers while Guangzhou Fashion Week is more about the wholesale market.
Last but not least, I also learnt that trends moves faster in China, where people used to love Michael Kors but not anymore because of the similarities of products the brand offers. People in China loves to have new designs all the time and they are the early adopters. After the talk ended, a Raf es Guangzhou representative brought us to Taikoo Hui Mall to look at their bookstore where I finally can purchase a local magazine.
The bookstore Fang Suo Commune was fascinating, I have never seen a bookstore selling various products including apparel. I ended up buying a fashion magazine to observe the layout of the Chinese version of Harpers Bazaar magazine which I bought for only 20CNY. However, in the end, the layout was quite similar just that the language is different. We got dismissed after the bookstore journey and off I go to get dinner with friends at Pizza Hut nearby our hotel. Before we get to hang out with the rest of our friends after dinner we packed up luggage and ready to leave Guangzhou because we know that it would be hard for us to pack in the morning as we might miss our flight.
That is the end of the trip in Guangzhou!
My conclusion for this Guangzhou trip is that, it was definitely was not easy going around a city with people that barely speaks english. On top of that, it was hard not being able to access social media or even google maps to help us get around Guangzhou. Therefore, we are lucky to have classmates that speaks Mandarin and are from China with Chinese SIM Cards, without them this trip would be a whole lot harder. I definitely observed and learnt a few things about the fashion trend in Guangzhou, where I can say a lot of the people follow Korean Fashion and loves Streetwear. Moreover, people would wear all blacks or all white from top to bottom. However as stated in my motivational statement, I would like to see sustainable fashion or products in the city, but we did not see any. Even when we went to the China Fabric and Accessories Center, it was hard to see or find anything sustainable to the point where it was almost non-existent. China Fabric and Accessories Center was definitely a place where I would get lost in because it was a big place to shop for fabric and other materials, maybe there were sustainable fabrics but it is definitely not easy to find. The cultural aspects of Guangzhou, people are very fast paced and ignorant I must say but I also can say that there are friendly people in Guangzhou. On top of that, sometimes I feel unsafe but sometimes I feel safe, depending on the areas where we went in the city.
Besides all that, I also mentioned that I would like to know who are the fashion influencers in Guangzhou, in the end I still have no idea except for Chinese celebrities on billboards and magazines. However, I do know that privileged locals pay for an application in their phones to access social medias like Instagram, Facebook and many more, so these people do have access of following international fashion influencers hence the growing international fashion trends in Guangzhou. On top of that, I did went to a Nike store with excitement but found out that the prices are the same in Singapore and went out the store with disbelief. On the other hand, after all of the days in Guangzhou, I did not find any materials that would help me in my Future Fashion Project product but I am happy that I get to eat Chinese food in Guangzhou for me to experience and observe the differences in other countries like Singapore or Malaysia.
Last but not least, this trip definitely was a very tiring trip from all the walking and finding out directions with our classmates, but it is one of the most memorable trip for me because I get to travel as well as experience China for the first time with my fellow classmates and lecturers. Overall, I am glad that we chose Guangzhou because we have more time to spend in Guangzhou compare to if we would have went to Milan, and I get to brush up on my Mandarin speaking skills again during this trip, which I thought I would never need to again.
-Stephanie Steven
