A Stylish Salute
The price hike on down jackets brings old military coats back in vogue By Zhang Yage
Zhang Chenyue, a 21-year-old college student majoring in fashion design in Beijing, is wearing the same kind of coat—an army coat—as her grandfather this winter. “My grandfather has been trying to convince me to wear this for years,” Zhang told Beijing Review. “He thinks it’s both cheap and cold-proof, I didn’t agree before because no one around me wore it, but now I see schoolmates wearing it all over campus.”
Recently, the topic “Price of down jackets gives away the winter market to army coats and padded jackets with floral patterns” hit the hot search topic list on Weibo, China’s most popular microblogging platform. Many netizens complained about the high prices of down jackets and shared photos of themselves wearing Chinese military coats or colorful traditional cottonpadded jackets.
This phenomenon can be seen especially on campus. On Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, a short video of a group of students filing into the classroom wearing army coats raked in 2 million likes. Another viral video showed a group of students wearing peony-patterned padded jackets on their campussportsfield.
Zhou Haifeng, manager of a store on Taobao, one of China’s largest e-commerce platforms, told Beijing Review that his store had sold more than 2,000 army coats and more than 1,000 padded jackets in November. “These are very popular this year; last year we sold about 2,000 of both for the whole winter,” he said. The front page of Zhou’s shop shows that these two products are available at 50-79 yuan ($7-$11.05) a piece, delivery fee included.
Identification
The army coat refers to the winter coat used by the Chinese military. Originally serving to keep soldiers wrapped up and warm in winter, in the 1980s, it became popular with civilians courtesy of its fashionable vibes and practical functions. This trend
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continued into the 1990s until the coat was gradually replaced by leather jackets and down jackets.
Padded jackets with brightly colored floral patterns originated from the northeastern part of China in the 1960s. The peony patterns, mainly red, pink, green and white, are considered festive and auspicious by Chinese people, so they are used not only for clothing, but also for quilts, sheets, curtains, pillowcases, etc.
Wang Guangxin, a professor of psychology at Beijing Forestry University, told Jiupai News that the popularity of these coats “reveals people’s nostalgic feelings buried deep in their collective subconsciousness, and also reflects people’s mutual cultural identification.”
“Fashion is cyclical. And when a certain trend comes back in style, it also takes you back in time,” Zhang told Beijing Review. “I remember growing up with these two specific items. My grandfather always hung his army coat by the door when he came in, and the colorful peony pattern was all over our house.”
Cheap and stylish jackets and coats are an undeniably eye-catching and contagious trend.
Chu Yanlai, an assistant professor of marketing at the Renmin Business School, Renmin University of China, believes that army coats and flaming red padded-jackets are more “contagious” in college because college students are more expressive and carefree than other social groups. “They’re at an age where they’re not embarrassed by what other people think of them. So they wear what they want. I can’t imagine an employee walking into an office building or going to a meeting wearing an army coat or bright jacket,” he said.
Tudor Finneran, an English student at Tsinghua University, expressed his interest in the traditional jacket. “I’m a big fan of bright colors. The jackets really brighten up the winter and are culturally relevant,” he told Beijing Review.
Finneran added that he also has the same kind of winter coat that his grandparents
loved to wear, and he still wears it. “It’s good to see young people in China wearing clothes from their grandparents’ time,” he said.
Behind the trend
But what has really drawn attention to army coats and cotton jackets, aside from their function, cultural symbolism and reasonable price, has been the surge in the prices of domestic down jackets, jackets with the soft and warm under feathers of ducks or geese, in recent years.
“I used to wear a down jacket in winter, and I have three of them. They were cheap when I bought them five or six years ago—only 1,700 yuan ($237.9) for three,” Zhang told Beijing Review. “I wanted to buy a new one last month, only to find that down jackets are out of my financial league. Now, with 1,700 yuan, I can buy only one good quality down jacket from the same brand.”
According to a study by the China National Commercial Information Center, from 2015 to 2020, the average price of down jackets skyrocketed from 432 yuan ($60.45) to 656 yuan ($91.8).
Take Bosideng, a 47-year-old down jacket company in China, for example. The brand raised its price tag by 63 to 80 percent from 2017 to 2021.
In addition to sharply raising product prices, some domestic brands, including Bosideng and apparel maker Skypeople, have launched new products that sell for more than 7,000 yuan ($979.53). In early December, the topic “Some domestic down jackets are sold for over 7,000 yuan” trended on Weibo, reaching 300 million views.
“Many reasons contributed to this continuous price surge, and the first is the increase in production cost,” Chu told Beijing Review.
According to research published by DT, a third-party consulting agency, from 2016 to 2022, 90 percent of white duck down rose from 200 yuan ($28) to about 360 yuan ($50.38) per kg, and 90 percent of white goose down rose from less than 400 yuan ($55.97) to about 640 yuan ($89.56) per kg. This trend is largely in line with the timeline of down jacket brands raising their prices.
According to research by the China National Garment Association, the size of China’s down jacket market in 2021 was 156.2 billion yuan ($21.35 billion). From 2016 to 2021, the compound annual growth rate of the down jacket market size was faster than that of the clothing market, indicating huge potential and intensifying competition.
Some down jacket manufacturers decided to up the ante by creating a fancier image to capture the high-end market segment and promote their brand. Chu believes this is the more important reason behind the out-ofcontrol jacket prices. “The potential of the down jacket market in China is driving domestic brands to adjust their strategies and design more expensive products to win the market, especially the high-end market, and once their high-end product succeeded, it also helps with the sales of their middle- and lower-end products,” he explained.
In recent years, as Chinese consumers have become more trusting of domestic brands, their shopping habits have changed.
“Since 2016, I’ve been conducting an annual survey of my students about what they value most when making a purchase. In the beginning, 70 percent of the students surveyed considered brand a priority. But today, they value ‘function’ over ‘brand,’ and they have no prejudice against domestic labels,” Chu said.
“Down jacket brands just need to take their time, adjust their marketing strategies and work on their products,” he concluded.