Unisex fashion brand Bosie is now a hit in the local Chinese market. [Photo provided to China Daily]
"I always wonder who decided that there should be a difference in the clothes of men and women," Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto told The New York Times in 1983 when he realized more and more women were buying his men's clothes.
With increasing talk of gender equality over the past few decades, fashion brands, which reflect designers' awareness, have continued exploring the genderless concept. Brands including Chanel, Zara and Converse have all launched genderless collections.
But it wasn't until the original unisex fashion brand Bosie became a hit in the local Chinese market that we could truly claim no difference existed between the clothing of men and women.
Unisex fashion brand Bosie is now a hit in the local Chinese market. [Photo provided to China Daily]
When the post-1995 fashion designer Liu Guangyao launched Bosie in 2018, its genderless concept immediately grabbed the attention of Tmall, Alibaba Group's e-commerce platform, and an online store for the brand soon followed in the same year.
Bosie raked in 1 million yuan in online revenue in the first month after its store opened, and in 2019 its overall revenue reached 140 million yuan, according to the e-commerce new media platform Global Netrepreneur.
Liu told the entrepreneurship service platform CYZone that Bosie was originally established as a fashion brand for men. But after seeing how more women were buying clothes from the men's collection, the brand shifted its focus to a genderless concept, which not only reduces the costs of product development and the supply chain but also improves the efficiency of customer acquisition.
Unisex fashion brand Bosie is now a hit in the local Chinese market. [Photo provided to China Daily]
Bosie's Tmall store has 350 million followers, many of the post-1995 and post-2000 generations
After setting up its first brick-and-mortar store in the Hangzhou Kerry Centre in 2019, Bosie went on to establish 26 stores in 16 cities such as Hangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou.
However, the 2,000-square-meter flagship store opened June 25 on Shanghai's Huaihai Road marked an important step for the brand.
Themed planet, the two-story flagship store can be divided into four areas: apparel, accessories, children's clothing and pets, and catering and retail. It has also designated several corners specially designed for taking photos, including the selfie fitting room that lets customers create photo stickers.
Clownfish [Photo provided to China Daily]
All the models in the store have a unisex appearance, while clownfish, symbolic of androgyny, swim about the fish tank around the store, lending a genderless atmosphere to the environment.
"The leisure area where I can get snacks and drinks while taking photos, and the area for customers to pet the pets make the store very different from other apparel shops," said Liu Yufei, 23, who lives in Shanghai and shops at Bosie at least once a month. She also cited the lifestyle products on display, such as candles and perfumes, as another reason she loves the store.
"For me, if a piece of clothing is comfortable or fits me, I don't care whether it's designed for men or women. Bosie makes feel comfortable when shopping around, and I highly agree with the brand's concept of gender equality," Liu Yufei said.
Unisex fashion brand Bosie is now a hit in the local Chinese market. [Photo provided to China Daily]
The brick-and-mortar stores portray a clearer image for the brand, which clearly wants to cultivate an integrated atmosphere for shopping, food and beverage, entertainment and music, turning consumption into a natural activity.
However, Bosie didn't make these achievements independently, as timing is everything, including in fashion.
As early as the 1920s, the genderless concept had found expression in the fashion industry. Coco Chanel launched navy trousers for women, challenging the traditional concepts of what women should wear. In 1966, Yves Saint Laurent created the Le Smoking women's suit, specially designed to fit and flatter the female figure.
However, the first formal appearance of "genderless" as a word occurred in the United States in the 1960s, when the new category of his 'n' hers landed in the catalog of a department store. Both male and female models in the advertisement wore the same lace-flared pants and loose shirts of the same color to express a new fashion vibe.
Unisex fashion brand Bosie is now a hit in the local Chinese market. [Photo provided to China Daily]
This new trend also provided a way for people to challenge themselves and break boundaries after World War II.
More recently, the winds of the asexual concept have been gaining strength in the fashion industry. "Unisex clothing" made the top 10 entries in the Key Words for 2021 Lifestyle Trend Report from social lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu. The same report noted that the number of views and shared notes related to unisex clothing in 2020 had increased by 182 percent and 83 percent, respectively, compared to the same period in the previous year.
Additionally, a report on nine fashion consumption trends for generation Z in 2021, released by e-commerce giant JD this year, announced that unisex clothing is becoming a fashion trend.
Unisex fashion brand Bosie is now a hit in the local Chinese market. [Photo provided to China Daily]
Wen Run, professor of textile design and industrial economics at Donghua University, explained that the growing popularity of the genderless concept in China could be traced back to 2005, when Li Yuchun, a female idol known for her androgynous style and dress, became the champion of the reality TV singing contest Super Girl.
Li's win and the social milieu, with growing equality between men and women, gradually blurred the distinction between genders posed by the rising trend of genderless style, Wen said.
"Designers also realized the phenomenon of men coming to embrace behavior once recognized as girlish, such as makeup and skincare, and of women also breaking some stereotypes, so they began to develop targeted designs balancing the relationship between consumer psychology and trends," Wen said.
Unisex fashion brand Bosie is now a hit in the local Chinese market. [Photo provided to China Daily]
Wen believes that the trend may persist into this decade and continue its development.
"From the perspective of education, we have found that both genders are breaking traditional stereotypes, so the young generation, as the main consumer force in the future and also one characterized by a strongly unconventional personality, will opt for a more genderless style."