British heritage brand Barbour [IG] is rapidly expanding in China, opening over 40 stores in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu, targeting the "quiet luxury" market with its heritage waxed jackets. The brand is localizing by launching exclusive, tailored collections for Asian consumers and collaborating with Chinese designers and cultural figures.

Barbour x Feng Chen Wang

Just as Burberry is seeing positive revenue results in China, so is Barbour, who reported today a 9% increase for the year ended April 30, 2025, with a 14.1% operating profit increase.

Barbour partnered with Chinese designer brand Feng Chen Wang [IG] on this capsule collection, one imbued with cultural storytelling and timed with Chinese New Year 2026 or the broader Lunar New Year in Asia.

Models Diwen Wang and Shao Minghao front the campaign, styled by Anders Sølvsten Thomsen.

Feng Chen Wang, who is known for gender-fluid designs, operates studios in both London and Shanghai. She explains that her attachment to Barbour began while studying in London. As the first female designer from China to focus on modern menswear at London’s Royal College of Art in the class of 2015, her work is known for technical deconstruction and fusing personal heritage with functional design.

The Year of the Dragon Horse, aka Long Ma

Honoring the mythical ‘Dragon Horse’, the campaign taps Barbour’s equestrian roots and the ancient power of Chinese storytelling. Barbour described the collaboration as a “powerful meeting of East and West.”

The year 2026 is Year of the Horse — but more specifically the Dragon Horse. Also called the Long Ma, the Dragon Horse is a mythical creature that appears in classical Chinese literature as a symbol of immense vitality, supreme vigor, courage, transcendence, and moral clarity.

Long Ma and China’s Younger Consumers

Appearing with a dragon’s head and a horse’s body [often with wings or scales] the appearance of a Long Ma signifies that a great, wise ruler is about to take the throne. Long Ma is also described as having the ability to walk on water without sinking, signifying its transcendence of earthly limitations.

The Horse interpreted in through the specific lens of the 2026 Dragon Horse values speed, but with valuable purpose for many and not the egocentric desires of one individual, determined to win at any cost to others. This point of view is supported by younger people worldwide, but is particularly important in China, where unfettered conspicuous consumption is frowned upon.

Anne of Carversville supports this more temperate posture on consumption, where the dominant culture is still a winner takes all mentality, here in America. The charts on the growth of income inequality in America are shocking.