My tableau

More Chinese men now dress to impress. At least that’s what the inaugural issue of GQ China suggests.

The fashion monthly sold 400,000 copies in October and 420,000 (till now) this month, according to media-planning consultancy Group M.

“GQ’s target readers are trendy men This is the right time for GQ to enter China’s market, because there are more potential readers now,” says Wang Feng, editorial director of GQ China, which is partly owned by US-based Conde Nast.

Traditionally, Chinese men have paid more attention to their career and family values, Wang says. “They were reluctant to accept that a man, too, needed to dress up.” But that has been changing over the past three years.

Three years ago, the L’Officiel Hommes magazine conducted a random survey in Beijing and Shanghai, which showed most men thought fashion was less important than other factors in life. The most common view was: A man should care more about his property and social status.

Women, however, have been paying more attention to grooming since the reform and opening up began in 1979.

Dou Jiangming, executive editor of Esquire China, said the last five years have seen quite a few men’s fashion magazines hitting the newsstands. Now, men have a much wider range to choose from – from Men’s Uno and Maxim to FHM and GQ China.

In fact, the first men’s fashion magazine in China was Esquire China – published with the Cosmopolitan’s Chinese edition in 1993. It became an independent magazine three years later.