A new trend of Chinese-style clothing, especially the so-called "Mandarin jacket", traditionally called tangzhuang, has become popular in the United States and abroad this spring and summer in clothing stores like Zara.
The aesthetic, dubbed "Neo-Chinese Style" in English, appears under the hashtag xinzhongshi on social media and has been declared a major 2026 fashion craze on TikTok and Instagram among Generation Z and other age groups.
"These jackets are clearly Asian-inspired," Desiree Jones, 55, from New York, told China Daily while shopping at a Zara store in Manhattan.
"I gravitate to that. It's fire. It pulls you in. It's the button placement and the structure of the jacket and the collar. That's where you really see that Asian cut. I see no problem with there being more Asian — or Chinese-inspired fashion in US stores because a lot of Americans are going to Asia, so it's nice we're mixing cultures."
The styles that are currently most popular adopt traditional Chinese tailoring such as Mandarin collars, pankou, or frog buttons, alongside Western tailoring. Horse-face skirts, known as mamianqun, are available for sale on Amazon.
