Fashion pulse: China - March 2026

Consumer prices (March)

Clothing prices in China rose 1.6 percent year-on-year in March, according to the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS), running 0.6 percentage points above the +1.0 percent headline inflation rate. Within the fashion basket, garments rose +1.7 percent and footwear +1.2 percent. The month-on-month reading for clothing was +0.4 percent, part of a generally stable Q1 trajectory: year-to-date clothing inflation stands at +1.8 percent versus headline at a roughly similar range. Fashion is contributing positively to Chinese inflation — a rare pattern among major economies in early 2026. In most OECD markets tracked by FashionUnited, clothing prices run below headline; China is one of the few where the fashion category sits above.

Retail sales (March)

Total retail sales of consumer goods in China reached CNY 4,161.6 billion (~USD 603 billion) in March, according to NBS, up 1.7 percent nominal year-on-year. Excluding automobiles, retail grew 3.2 percent nominal. Clothing retail significantly outperformed total retail. The “clothes, shoes, hats and textiles” line for enterprises above the designated size grew 7.0 percent nominal year-on-year to CNY 129.6 billion in March; the year-to-date figure through March stands at +9.3 percent nominal (CNY 412.2 billion). Deflated by the clothing CPI of +1.6 percent YoY, real clothing retail growth is approximately +5.3 percent year-on-year for March and +7.4 percent year-to-date — multiples of the total retail print. Online fashion retail is running even hotter. Online retail of clothing grew 11.6 percent nominal year-to-date through March, according to NBS, compared with +7.5 percent for overall online goods retail and +3.6 percent for daily necessities. Online retail of goods now accounts for 24.8 percent of China’s total consumer retail — almost one percentage point higher than a year earlier — and clothing is disproportionately represented in that channel shift.

Monetary policy and currency

The People’s Bank of China has held the 1-year Loan Prime Rate at 3.00 percent for eleven consecutive months, since May 2025. The yuan ended March at USD/CNY 6.8957 monthly mean (a marginal 0.18 percent appreciation versus February’s 6.9081) but strengthened 2.4 percent versus the euro, with CNY/EUR averaging 7.9703 in March against 8.1682 in February.

Note: this article combines the most recent official data available at the time of writing. Reporting lags differ by indicator and country, so not all figures refer to the same month. Each data point is labelled with its reference period.