Dongguan-based Lailong Tangzhuang, a heritage menswear brand tracing its tailoring lineage to 1918, took center stage at the “Silk Road Yunshang: China-Central Asia Apparel Brand Exhibition” in Kazakhstan in June 2025. Its xiangyunsha Tang suits, featuring non-slip bead pankou (frog buttons) and integrated Miao and Yi embroidery motifs, drew sustained attention from Kazakh buyers and signaled a maturing export strategy for new-Chinese menswear.
Four Generations of Stand-Collar Craft
The brand was founded by Chen Chunlong, who built a four-generation craft tradition around the “stand collar plus pankou” silhouette and pioneered a “new-Chinese business-casual menswear” line. The brand’s signature is a structured, single-breasted jacket cut close to the body, with a soft stand collar in the Qing-dynasty scholar tradition and a single pankou closure worked in braided silk cord. “Pankou is the soul of the whole garment, the hardest-core of intangible heritage competitiveness,” Chen said in an interview at the Kazakhstan event. The statement positions pankou-making, a craft often dismissed as a finishing detail, as a load-bearing element of the brand’s value proposition.
The Kazakhstan exhibition also marked the first time Lailong integrated non-Han ethnic motifs, in this case Miao silver-style embroidery and Yi geometric patterns, into its core Tang suit line. The cross-ethnic borrowing was a deliberate choice, signaling that the brand sees “new-Chinese” as a pan-Chinese vocabulary rather than a Han-specific one. Buyers responded well to the visual distinctiveness, particularly the silver-tone beadwork against xiangyunsha’s matte black-brown surface.
Shenzhen ICIF and the Southeast Asian Pipeline
At the 2026 Shenzhen ICIF (International Cultural Industries Fair), Lailong returned with xiangyunsha, song brocade, and hualuo silk Tang suits, alongside new-Chinese qipao, accessories, and pankou-based earrings and hair clips. The booth attracted 310 overseas exhibitors from 65 countries and regions, providing a substantial pipeline for distribution and licensing discussions. The accessory line, in particular, opened a lower price-point entry for international customers unfamiliar with full Tang suits.
Humen’s apparel-industry cluster, of which Lailong is a flagship, has been actively building international channels for its heritage brands, and the Central Asia debut is part of a multi-year export push that also targets Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. The strategy relies on a “heritage plus contemporary” framing: the brand’s 1918 pedigree anchors authenticity, while the modern cuts and accessory extensions give overseas buyers a low-risk way to test the line. With xiangyunsha demand growing 47% year-on-year in 2025 and Gen Z consumers globally showing rising interest in craft-led apparel, Lailong’s timing appears well aligned with the broader market direction.