Babyghost represents the struggle years of a group of young fashion talents
Author | Drizzie
It has been ten years since Chinese designer brands started learning by doing.
According to fashion business news, fashion designer Huang Qiran Qiaoran recently announced through his personal Weibo and circle of friends that he will shut down the Babyghost brand he co-founded, and has stopped launching new ones. Tmall stores and Taobao stores have begun inventory cleaning , the store will be closed after the cleanup is complete.
Quiet Huang said in her circle of friends that her partner Joshua Hupper has returned to New York, and she will start again after settling down.
The news of Babyghost’s closure has left a generation of fashion lovers feeling quite sad. Because Babyghost not only represents a brand, but also condenses the epitome of many progresses in China’s fashion industry.
Chinese models compete in the international fashion week, designers study abroad to start their careers, and the domestic e-commerce market and consumption power gradually rise to drive the development of the fashion industry. Babyghost is standing at the intersection of many memories, representing a The struggling years of a group of young fashion talents.
Babyghost issued a statement on Weibo account
Babyghost was founded in New York in 2010. After graduating from Donghua University with a major in fashion design, designer Huang Qiran went to Parsons in New York for further study, then worked as an intern at Diane Von Furstenberg, and joined Nathan Jenden as an assistant designer. Joshua Hupper also has working experience in American designer brands such as Diane Von Furstenberg and Thakoon. When he met Huang Qiran, he was working as a senior designer at Nathan Jenden.
Because of similar aesthetics and ambitions, Huang Qiran and Joshua Hupper hit it off and founded the Babyghost brand. Just like the creation stories of many brands, the brand did not have a studio at first, and Joshua Hupper worked in the kitchen of Huang Qiran’s home.
After the brand improved slightly, Huang Qiran’s home became the stronghold of new Chinese models who went overseas at that time. Liu Wen, Ju Xiaowen, Sun Feifei, Chen Bige, He Sui, and Xi Mengyao were all resident or often went to work in New York at the time, and they became good friends with Huang Qiran and Joshua Hupper.
When Huang Qiran was a student, she met Liu Wen when she was working as a dresser in the backstage of Fashion Week, and later she often ran into them on the road. Ju Xiaowen, whose personality is a perfect match with Babyghost, was met by Huang Qiran and Joshua Hupper on the streets of New York. They also met Sun Feifei, who is also from Weifang, Shandong, when they were working in London.
At that time, their careers had just started, and the friendship established in this way was often more pure, and they never hesitated to help each other. Unlike the well-established celebrity marketing a decade later, the bond between Babyghost and these model muses is more organic and long-lasting.
Many people know Babyghost through the daily wear of these models. It happened that the trend of supermodel Off Duty street photography was hot at that time, and Weibo and Instagram social media were just emerging. The extremely popular street photos of models and the social media interactions that these friends usually post casually gave Babyghost, who was still young at the time, an enviable reputation and loyal followers.
Supermodel Ju Xiaowen’s ghostly character and Babyghost are a match made in heaven
Behind this, it also reflects the wave of studying abroad in art that was rising in China at that time. A group of students who hope to realize their ideals through studying abroad imagine a world full of dreams through the pictures portrayed by these young women on social media.
From this point of view, Babyghost may be the first Chinese designer brand to establish community culture. The unique style makes Babyghost a designer brand inspiration for many young women. This ghostly, slightly dark, yet wearable style is indeed unique and highly recognizable, and it was still completely blank in the market dominated by large domestic women’s clothing brands at that time. Then through the community, Babyghost gave life to this relatively niche style and made it spread widely.
Find a balance between Baby and Ghost, and create a wardrobe for girls with brave personalities, which fits the female image of Huang Qiran and her friends. In the subsequent development process, the three-dimensional sides of Baby and Ghost have been reflected in this brand.
The Sino-American transnational cultural background and young vitality have brought Babyghost advantages that global designer brands did not have in the same period. At different development stages of the brand, Babyghost has its own emphasis on the Chinese market and the US market, but in general, Babyghost has boarded the authoritative Style.com (predecessor of VogueRunway) in the US and won the affirmation of the industry.Bian stepped on the first wave of domestic e-commerce and opened the earliest designer brand Taobao store.
One hand is ideal, the other hand is pragmatic. Babyghost embodies the pragmatism and business sense that the two co-founders have acquired from Parsons and several American designer brands. A down-to-earth spirit that can penetrate the industrial chain.
After about five years, people will see a different brand idea in the personal brand of a group of British art school graduates. Compared with American fashion schools such as Parsons and FIT, British fashion schools often encourage students to create pioneers, and commercial considerations are almost always ranked as the second priority.
Different from many designer brands, Babyghost’s pricing is very close to the people. This grassroots nature has also become the embodiment of the brand’s rebellious gene. To some extent, the market has gradually blurred Babyghost’s designer brand positioning.
Although in the process of brand growth, loyal fans complained about the price increase, the price of Babyghost was not unattainable from the beginning to the end. The price of the autumn and winter models is about 2,000 yuan, and the spring and summer models are about 400 to 500 yuan. The two believe that the price enough to enter the window of high-end department stores does not mean the success of a brand.
At the product level, Babyghost pays attention to practical wear and product structure design that American brands often look for. Babyghost initially started with loose basic T-shirts, and gradually expanded to stitching sweaters, mesh lace dresses, etc., and the product lineup has been continuously improved.
Babyghost’s forward-looking business is also reflected in the earlier deployment of domestic e-commerce channels. Huang Qiran, who has lived abroad for a long time, knew little about Taobao. At that time, the fashion ecology of Taobao was far less mature than it is now. No one would link the platform for shopping for cheap small things with fashion designers. The fashion industry used to think that designer brands opened Taobao stores will affect brand positioning. But the ever-evolving environment made Huang quietly aware of the future of e-commerce.
Under the unconditional trust of Joshua Hupper, Huang Qiran resolutely opened the first store of Babyghost on Taobao in April 2011 despite the opposition of friends in the industry.
Facts have proved that this move is ahead of its time and completely correct. Babyghost took advantage of the golden decade of explosive growth of e-commerce and consumption upgrades, and gained a large number of loyal customers. As of now, Babyghost’s Taobao store has 404,000 fans, and the words “10-year-old store” are also impressive.
In the past 12 years, Babyghost’s Taobao store has accumulated 404,000 fans
At the same time, Babyghost has also entered offline channels through boutique boutiques and luxury department stores, and has formed a deep friendship with early buyer stores such as Dongliang and BNC Mint Glutinous Rice Onion. However, in the subsequent development, Babyghost seems to have no intention of expanding physical channels, almost completely abandoning the strategic location of the buyer’s store channel that it must capture as a designer brand, but focusing on Taobao stores.
In 2015, a group of emerging Chinese designer brands rose rapidly on the stage of Shanghai Fashion Week. As a designer brand, Babyghost also participated in this ecology. After holding the static display of the 2016 autumn and winter series in New York Fashion Week, Babyghost immediately showed the 2017 spring and summer series in Shanghai Fashion Week, and also cooperated with the blockchain technology company VeChain. cooperation.
In 2017, Babyghost cooperated with YOHO! to release the 2017 autumn and winter micro-movie at New York Fashion Week. The 2020 autumn and winter series is the last fashion static show held by Babyghost.
Babyghost has held static shows in New York Fashion Week and Shanghai Fashion Week
However, in the increasingly lively domestic fashion industry, Babyghost has gradually faded out in recent years, reducing the frequency of fashion shows and related physical activities. purely online activities.
At the same time, a group of younger and pioneering Chinese designer brands have gradually attracted the attention of the market. Most of them have received fashion education in Europe, and have refreshed domestic designers through more visually impactful pioneering designs and fashion shows. A new look for the brand.
Babyghost, which is close to the people, has moved towards a relatively more commercial model in terms of style and brand operation. Looking at today’s designer brand market, it seems that there are fewer and fewer domestic independent designers graduating from American fashion schools.
Some analysts pointed out that American fashion education encourages students to gain as much experience as possible from large fashion companies, while European fashion education emphasizes individuality, coupled with the wave of Chinese designers creating brands. College graduates are willing to take the risk of launching a personal brand directly.
The commercialization route led Babyghost to dilute the early ghost horse style and add a lot of feminine designs, trying to break through the limitations of the niche style brought to the brand in the mass e-commerce market. But for the earlyFor loyal fans who love Babyghost’s style, Babyghost’s style transformation has lost its competitiveness in creativity, making it less recognizable, and the new style has failed to establish the same uniqueness as the original. Behind the style change is Babyghost’s choice as an independent designer or a Taobao commercial brand.
The brand’s operation method is also closer to Taobao, and it focuses more on the promotion nodes of the e-commerce market rather than the rhythm of fashion week for design, production, distribution and dissemination.
The designer duo didn’t explain much more about why Babyghost shut down.
As far as the direct reason is concerned, although Babyghost has never disclosed its sales performance, the outside world speculates that domestic women’s clothing brands, including this brand, have been hit directly by the epidemic. Affected by repeated epidemics, in May 2022, the retail sales and retail volume of women’s clothing in key large-scale retail enterprises across the country will decline to a large extent.
In addition, in the post-epidemic era, the different plans of the designer group for personal life may also make them finally make the decision to close the brand.
The deeper reason is that the momentum that Babyghost is riding on is gradually fading. When models become supermodels, young consumers who aspire to become Babyghost girls suddenly mature, and the memories shared by a generation become strange stories for young consumers. The brand’s fan structure becomes looser and lacks a stable source of purchasing power. The influence of the bundled brand and celebrity has not been sustained. Sandwiched between high-priced designer brands and low-priced competing Taobao brands, Babyghost, whose positioning is swaying, inevitably seems confused.
A brand may be able to survive ten years in the European and American markets, but it is extremely difficult in the Chinese market. A decade here feels like half a century, enough to accommodate an excess of change.
During the ten years of drastic changes in China’s fashion industry, Babyghost was fortunate to have the right time, place and people at the beginning of its establishment. But when a major wave of Chinese designer brands is coming and the market is ready to accept more personalized products, Babyghost, which is practical, is chosen to pass the wave.
From Babyghost ghost horse girl to Shushu/Tong girl, it is an iteration of Chinese designer brands.
Of course, each generation of designer brands has its own problems. When the avant-garde designers returning from London face the unavoidable commercialization problems, they also have to make decisions that will still look correct ten years later.
* Aaron Lai is rightThis article also contributes
More information about Babyghost
