CITY GUIDE >Culture and Events
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CITY GUIDE >Culture and Events
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Young rock fans snap up band-name clothes
By Chen Nan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-10 09:51 When Nine Inch Nails came to Beijing in 2007, the 10,000 T-shirts with their name on sold out in one day. "It just shows that musicians may have more of an influence over the way people dress than fashion designers do," Chen says. "When a fan sees an attractive musician wearing a certain look on stage, he wants to go straight off and get exactly what the musician's wearing. "Style has always been very important to us. The logo, color and texture reflect the band's style, which can be imitated and shared by their fans." Prices usually range from 50 to 160 yuan ($7.3-23.4), quite cheap compared with overseas. China's First Electronic Music Festival in May saw more than 10,000 visitors to the 798 art district. Chen's team designed the festival tee and he says many people lined up at the kiosks behind the stage to buy them. When he began the business he sounded out musicians for ideas before anyone else. One man who appreciated that was Lao Mao, lead singer with local band AK 47, whose members wear the same tees on stage. "Music influences fashion and vice versa," he says Fans of each style of music have their own uniform: skinny shirts and faded jeans for rockers, loose jeans and hoodies for rappers, cross-lined shirts and boots for the country singer. In a big city like Beijing, where the music scene is booming, the music and fashion industries are starting to merge in many ways. Record stores are now selling clothes; clothes stores are selling CDs; record companies are starting fashion lines and musicians are even designing clothes themselves. "All this activity is part of a crossover production pushing both industries forward," says Chen. At Wazzap, the tees are designed by local designers, which is Chen's aim to prompt Chinese original clothes designers, including Cult Youth, an independent art group with 20 young artists. Local record labels have also started designing their own clothes in recent years, and more are planning to follow suit. Pilot Music, an indie record label, has designed 10 series of T-shirts for artists, such as AK 47 and Reflector. Zhong Sheng, a manager at Pilot Music, believes the fashion and music worlds may intersect more in the future as increasing numbers of people love local original music.
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