Summer fashion: competition among domestic and foreign trademarks

Fashion for summer season has got numerous designs to choose.

A various fashion market for summer season

According to many booth – owners in Bien Hoa market, ready-made clothes always have their own a great number of customers, especially the youth because their styles and material are not only designed to accommodate all tastes and interests but their price are also reasonable. Presently, a consumer can get a satisfying T-shirt or blouse only at between twenty thousand to forty five thousand VND. As for Jeans, they cost between seventy to ninety thousand VND for specific styles and material. Ms. Ba Hien, an owner of a ready-made garment booth in Bien Hoa, said, “New clothes are delivered every day and styles change steadily (about ten new styles per day) so buyers can choose from the huge number of styles as their wish. Different kinds of undershirts and blouses sown on cotton and elastic in orange, yellow or greenish blue etc are sold like hot cakes.” Although ready-to-wear garment designs are various, customers can dress themselves with their own styles. When I happened to meet Ms. Lien, who is always seeking strange designs at Bien Hoa market, she remarked, “to pick out satisfying clothes for yourself, you only need to spend time on seeking.”      

Addition to off the peg booths in markets, ready-made garment shops with Korean or HongKong styles are not less crowded with customers. there have been more ten fashion shops dealing in Hong Kong garments for the last few months, on such streets as April 30, Dong Khoi or National Street 15 (near Tan Mai market, Bien Hoa city) etc. Most of these shops have numerous customers. The shops on April 30 street such as P.T Boy, Pinky Girl etc all have garment catalogues which are regularly updated with latest designs and bound into books for customers to look through easily. Popular styles for the youth in this summer season are T-shirts with sleeve cuffs, T-shirts with cold colors like lime yellow and silver white, and flowered “voan” undershirt. For Jeans, dark blue or black is in much demand. Besides, Hong Kong hip-hop fashion like baggy pants or loose pullover is also sold like hot cakes. Despite the simple designs, most of Hong Kong garments have gained in popularity on the market. Ms. Huyen, the owner of a Hong Kong Fashion Shop on National Street 15 (opposite Bitis Company) said, “Addition to various designs and color, material of Hong Kong garments is also plentiful and assorted. A garment made in Hong Kong is worth over one hundred and fifty thousand VND while a garment made in Vietnam with material imported from Hong Kong is priced at between seventy to one hundred and thirty thousand VND for particular designs…”

A large number of trademarks’ enter the market.

To compete with Hong Kong and Korean Fashion flooding into Vietnamese market, domestic fashion garments companies have also put their new collections on the market. A shop assistant of a Nino Maxx fashion dealer in Bien Hoa city told us that the company had had launched its collection of nearly one hundred designs for T-shirt and jeans. They are 100% cotton “Pointtelle and Melange” designs of undershirts, short-sleeve garments that are suitable to summer. Along with Nino Maxx, other branches such as Blue Exchange, Sifa, PT Collection etc have launched new designs with “voan” fabric, linen, taffta that are pure, light and thin and so appropriate to the tropical climate. Ms. Nguyen, a shop assistant of Sifa Fashion Shop on April 30 Street said, “A trademark will have to renew itself if it wants to secure its place in the market in the present-day competitive environment. Sifa’s designs look elegant and always distinctive so they are very popular with many people.”

Foci’s World Cup fashion collections

This summer, two designers namely Nguyen Ha Nhat Huy and Pham Nguyen Hoang Thien Toan (two main designers of Foci brand) made a distinctive mark with their own World Cup fashion collections. They are T-shirt with colorful and creative borders, prints of football – player and prints of countries attended World Cup, all of which bring grace to the collections and so satisfy the youth’s fashion trend today.

According to information of fashion shops in Bien Hoa, such domestic garments as Nino Maxx, Sifa, Foci have been at steady price although there has been an increase in material prices. A T-shirt is worth between 69,000 to 89,000VND, blouses range in price from 65,000 to 95,000 VND per one, a suit or a long dress is priced at between 140,000 to 250,000 VND etc.

(Translated by THKC)