Bosideng Marks 50 Years with ‘Warmth Code’ Exhibition in Shanghai

Press release from Bosideng-Monday 26 October 2026.

Half a century of craftsmanship and innovation underpins a Chinese down specialist’s creativity on the international fashion stage

SHANGHAI, 19 October 2026 – Bosideng has opened ‘Warmth Code: Half a Century of History’, its 50th-anniversary exhibition, at Gate M West Bund Dream Center in Shanghai, with an inaugural ceremony attended by senior Bosideng executives, brand ambassadors and international film stars.

Two weeks after presenting ‘The Bloom’ at Paris Fashion Week, the brand brings together archives, milestone garments and work from its international design collaborations. Looking back on five decades devoted to the down jacket, the exhibition traces the brand’s path from product innovation to contemporary fashion design. It opens to the public on 19 October and runs until 1 November.

The exhibition is organised into six themed spaces. In the ‘Chronicle’ space, 15 display cases bring together landmark garments with design sketches, fabric samples and archive images, marking key moments of innovation in the brand’s history. Elsewhere in the exhibition, founding-era objects such as an early sewing machine still carry the marks of the brand’s beginnings. Garments from different eras stand in sharp contrast: the one-piece down suit that reached the summit of Mount Qomolangma, the world’s highest peak; the Trench Coat Down Jacket, which combines classic tailoring with warmth; and in the ‘Boundless’ space, architectural pieces by international designers. Together, they show how the down jacket has changed in function, form and aesthetic. The designer collaborations, in particular, explore bold silhouettes and constructions, showing what this specialist category can achieve in fashion.

Boundless creation: expertise at the heart of international collaboration

Through Bosideng’s collaborations with Jean Paul Gaultier and Kim Jones, the same down takes on distinctly different fashion personalities. The New-Generation Down Jacket Collection with Jean Paul Gaultier uses innovative filling techniques and garment construction to create expressive silhouettes, while the premium AREAL line, led by Kim Jones, brings architectural shapes and a futuristic aesthetic to functional clothing. These pieces are shown together in the ‘Boundless’ space, alongside collaborations with Kenzo Takada and Errolson Hugh.

If these collaborations show the material through other designers’ eyes, Bosideng’s own design vision came to the fore on 5 October at Paris Fashion Week with ‘The Bloom’, its 50th-anniversary show. Creative Director Pietro Ferragina took the volume of down as his starting point, bringing together the geometric order of Art Deco, the construction of the Haipai qipao (the Shanghai-style fitted dress with a mandarin collar) and the weaving of Song brocade (a figured silk from Suzhou dating back to the Song dynasty) into contemporary design.

The Extreme Cold line pairs down with tulle and satin, bringing technical cold-weather clothing closer to eveningwear. The Puff line, with its reworked qipao stand collar and light, lofty volumes, offers a modern reading of Chinese dress. Across these pieces, the volume of down shapes the silhouette, its lightness sets proportion and layering, and the qualities of the material itself inform the design. By allowing down to shape its garments and drawing Chinese dress culture into its aesthetic, Bosideng is developing a fashion language of its own for the category.

For decades, China’s apparel industry has taken part in global fashion through the strength of its manufacturing systems and craftsmanship. As in-house research and original design capabilities have developed, the knowledge built up in materials, techniques and products has become an important resource for Chinese brands working in fashion design. Bosideng brings the knowledge and design judgement gained from fifty years of work with down to its creative process, contributing its own point of view and original work to international collaborations. Building on its roots as a specialist in down-jacket development and manufacturing, it has grown into an active contributor to global fashion design.

To mark the anniversary, Bosideng has entered into a strategic partnership with the Vogue China Fashion Fund and France’s Association Nationale pour le Développement des Arts de la Mode (ANDAM), connecting emerging Chinese designers with French and international creative networks and broadening the global design ecosystem. The brand’s commitment to original design now extends from co-created collections to talent support. By combining the development of a new generation of designers, cross-cultural creative exchange and the renewal of its own design capabilities, it aims to build a lasting pool of talent and ideas for long-term innovation in down fashion.

Innovation: turning accumulated expertise into design freedom

Behind the international collaborations and the looks on the Paris runway lie five decades of research into down, garment construction and manufacturing techniques. The exhibition presents this technical foundation directly, through materials, technical documents and deconstructed garment installations.

In the ‘Craft’ space, the suspended installation ‘Inside the Qomolangma 1.0 Jacket’ reveals, layer by layer, the insulation structure, protective fabrics and functional features of a down jacket built for extreme cold. The demands that high altitude and extreme cold place on warmth, protection, weight and freedom of movement led the brand to study closely how materials and garment structure work together. That experience now supports the down jacket’s move into a wider range of occasions and silhouettes.

Launched in 2021, the Trench Coat Down Jacket brought this know-how to classic ready-to-wear. A trench coat calls for a crisp outline and fluid lines; down needs room to loft if it is to keep warm. Using 52 pattern pieces, 150 production steps and precise zoned filling, Bosideng reworked the garment’s structure to combine the classic cut of the trench with the light warmth of down.

The lapels, belt and throat latch carry the trench coat’s vocabulary, while the layout of the inner down channels and the depth of filling are adjusted zone by zone to hold the clean exterior line. From material selection and pattern-making to production, research and manufacturing teams work towards a single design goal, so that the demands of city dressing for line, proportion and light warmth are realised in each finished garment.

This command of materials and structure gives Bosideng its design freedom: the ability both to achieve clean lines through precise craftsmanship and to sculpt bold silhouettes with the volume of down. Decades of technical research and manufacturing practice allow the brand to design fashion starting from down itself, turning the material’s functional qualities into a recognisable aesthetic.

Origins: half a century of dedication to one craft

The down jacket, Bosideng’s core category, has been the brand’s constant focus since its beginnings. That commitment started with a young tailor’s dream: to make a high-performance down jacket of China’s own.

In the ‘Dream’ space, two editions of the Shanghai newspaper Jiefang Daily, one from 1975 and one from 2026, are presented together, linking an ambition born half a century ago with the brand’s 50th anniversary. In 1975, while making clothes for a professor in a shikumen lane house in Shanghai, Bosideng’s future founder, Gao Dekang, read a newspaper report on the Chinese mountaineering team’s ascent of Mount Qomolangma and resolved to make high-performance down jackets. The following year, he and a group of fellow villagers started out in Changshu, Jiangsu Province, with eight sewing machines. In 1998, a specially made one-piece down suit by Bosideng reached the summit of Mount Qomolangma with the Chinese mountaineering team. After more than two decades of perseverance, the dream born in 1975 found its answer at the top of the world.

Inspired by the evergreen pine that Gao Dekang planted with his own hands in the company’s early days, the light installation ‘Ten Thousand Stitches, Ten Thousand Threads’ echoes the pine’s needles in a tailor’s silver needles, as a tribute to the brand’s long commitment to its core craft.

That craftsmanship is visible in the steady improvement of each generation of products. The anti-down-leak needles, expandable thread and pattern blocks on display record small refinements made to reduce down leakage and to improve warmth and comfort in movement. A landmark 1995 down jacket designed for everyday wear brought a distinct fashion sensibility to cold-weather clothing through changes in fill, fabric, colour and cut. From the work of needle and thread to innovations that answer the needs of each era, the pursuit of a good down jacket runs through the brand’s entire history.

A new chapter: independent creation as the foundation of a Chinese brand’s international value

The archives on display in the exhibition chart a clear path to the contemporary pieces seen on the Paris runway. From early technical work focused on warmth and practical wear to independent creation in silhouette and aesthetic expression, Bosideng has gradually turned what it has learned into the capacity to put forward its own design ideas and to create new work consistently.

For Chinese brands entering international fashion, the global stage offers a chance to be seen. What builds lasting brand value, however, is a steady flow of original work and a clear, independent creative position behind it. Drawing on its in-depth understanding of down, Bosideng is expanding its design freedom, bringing Chinese dress culture into contemporary design and, with knowledge and aesthetic experience built up over decades, contributing work with a distinct identity of its own to global fashion.

Looking ahead to its next half-century, Bosideng will continue to focus on the down jacket, using innovation to drive original design and developing its own fashion language through exchange with creative talent around the world, in search of new forms and new aesthetic possibilities.

Fifty years ago, a young tailor dreamed of making China’s own high-performance down jacket. Fifty years on, Bosideng is carrying that dream forward by bringing its own expertise and aesthetic vision to global fashion.

Jiali FAN

+33 6 58 99 43 00

jiali.fan@ibluegroup.com

Media contact

Rebecca (Jiali) FAN | iBLUE PARIS

+33 6 58 99 43 00

jiali.fan@ibluegroup.com

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