Bilibili, the Chinese YouTube, is the go-to for Gen Z fashion trends as luxury brands, from Gucci to Louis Vuitton, court young consumers

Louis Vuitton and Gucci are among the names that have collaborated with or advertised on Bilibili, a video-streaming platform popular with China’s Gen Z

Dior became the first luxury brand to open an account on the platform last year and produced a short film featuring virtual influencer Xuefei Nova

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“New classy look” is trending as the latest fashion buzzword on Bilibili. The video platform - which one in two young Chinese people used regularly in 2020 - is seeing a surge in fashion-related content, and big global luxury brands are taking notice.

Published: 2:15pm, 14 Apr 2021Updated: 2:15pm, 14 Apr 2021

Even as Covid-19 closed retailers and stopped people showing off their latest outfits in public, China’s fashion industry proved more than resilient during the pandemic, thanks in part to video-streaming platform Bilibili.

According to a report in March that Bilibili released alongside Alibaba’s Tmall and Alimama, interest in fashion content on the Chinese platform increased markedly in 2020 over 2019. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.

Views of fashion-related videos jumped by 130 per cent, while clips from fashion shows saw a viewership growth of 140 per cent.

Overall, the number of monthly users consuming fashion content nearly doubled, up 80 per cent over 2019.

Bilibili is home to the same type of quirky, mindless content found on many social media platforms.

Bilibili is often described as China’s answer to YouTube. It also has a “bullet curtain” feature, where text commentary from viewers scrolls across the screen. If there are lots of comments, it can engulf the video entirely, like a curtain of bullets.