Lao Gan Ma's chili-sauce logo becomes a $120 NYFW hoodie — Tmall's guochao stunt sells out

Tmall wanted to make heritage Chinese brands desirable to young consumers instead of nostalgic. For New York Fashion Week's 'China Day', it selected six brands including Lao Gan Ma, the Guizhou chili-sauce maker that never advertised, and asked US boutique Opening Ceremony to design the crossovers.

Turn a chili-sauce label into a $120 NYFW hoodie: Tmall's Guochao Initiative teams heritage brands with designer Opening Ceremony, so the logo itself becomes the fashion.

Opening Ceremony designed a red logo hoodie ('Lao Gan Ma Hoodie', $120), a 'Sauces Queen' apron ($40) and accessories, sold at a China Day pop-up in its Ace Hotel store from 9 to 11 September 2018 and simultaneously on Tmall, where a ¥1,288 sauce-plus-hoodie bundle sold out quickly.

The hoodie was called the representative of 'earthy-cool' Chinese fashion and topped Weibo's hot search; more than 10 million netizens visited the Tmall flagship store, the ¥1,288 bundle sold out, and Lao Gan Ma's Tmall revenue rose 240% — making the campaign the emblem of the guochao (national trend) movement.

During New York Fashion Week in September 2018, Tmall's Guochao Initiative (国潮行动) took six heritage Chinese brands to 'China Day' and asked the American boutique Opening Ceremony to design crossovers. Lao Gan Ma — the Guizhou chili sauce that Chinese students abroad treat as a piece of home and that its owner says has never advertised — became a $120 'Lao Gan Ma Hoodie' and a $40 'Sauces Queen' apron.

The pop-up ran from 9 to 11 September at Opening Ceremony's store in the Ace Hotel, with the same items sold on Tmall. There, a ¥1,288 bundle of sauce plus hoodie sold out quickly. Chinese media called the hoodie the representative of '土味时尚' (earthy-cool Chinese fashion); it topped Weibo's hot search, more than 10 million netizens visited Lao Gan Ma's Tmall flagship, and the brand's Tmall revenue rose 240% during the campaign.

Tmall's guochao project lead explained that Opening Ceremony repositioned the old brands with an international eye — defining Lao Gan Ma as 'Sauces Queen' and using the young audience's love of big logos. Lao Gan Ma's e-commerce head Li Junyu said the team initially refused the invitation: 'We never do any advertising,' he said, 'but we never expected to go viral again this way.'

The label was the product: no slogan or story was needed — the red chili logo itself was the fashion, so the joke worked without explanation.

The absurdity was intentional: a $120 hoodie for a sauce that costs a few dollars made heritage feel playful instead of dusty.

Tmall placed the provocation where the audience already was — NYFW plus Weibo — so overseas and domestic attention amplified each other.

It respected the brand's identity: Lao Gan Ma's famous restraint made the unexpected fashion moment land even harder.

Let a trusted outsider give the brand a role it never played: a sauce label that never advertised became fashion because the logo itself did the talking — the absurdity made the heritage desirable.

The hoodie became the emblem of Tmall's Guochao Initiative, which in the same season put Yunnan Baiyao masks, Shuangmei, Master Kong, Aqua Spring and the Summer Palace on the runway; the campaign turned 'guochao' into one of Chinese marketing's most-used words and a template for heritage-brand crossovers. Lao Gan Ma itself stayed restrained, but the moment permanently changed how young Chinese consumers saw the brand.