During the National Day holiday, "disposable outfits" aimed at travel photography once again became a buzzword on social platforms. These garments, priced as low as around ten yuan and at most a few dozen yuan, saw an order peak in the two weeks before the long holiday, filling young people's suitcases from the grasslands of Xinjiang to island beaches. After the photos are taken, they are either left idle, thrown in the trash, or listed on second-hand platforms for low-price resale.

Key points

  • Most disposable outfits are priced under 50 yuan, with fabrics mainly polyester, chiffon, denim, and lace; travel photography is the most frequent use scenario.
  • An e-commerce shop owner said the store sells over 10,000 items per month, with bestsellers at 20 to 50 yuan, but the repurchase rate is less than 10%, and the industry return rate generally reaches 30% to 50%.
  • Cai Shangwei, director of the Cultural Industry Research Center at Sichuan University, warned that excessive fabric dyes, formaldehyde residue, or unqualified pH levels may cause contact dermatitis and allergies, and clothing should uniformly comply with national textile safety standards.

Consumers: buy cheap for photos, then resell or discard after wearing

Lin Xiao, a post-95s woman, ordered three vacation dresses from an e-commerce platform a week before National Day, spending less than eighty yuan in total. She told Cover News reporters that white dresses and bright-colored long skirts photograph best by Erhai Lake, but she never wears them to work, so buying expensive ones would be a waste; these dresses were left directly in the homestay wardrobe on the return trip. She mentioned that such clothes are thin and lightweight, pilling and deforming after one wash, and dry cleaning costs almost as much as the clothes themselves. Among her friends, the occasional ones with particularly good results are listed on second-hand platforms for low-price resale, while most end up in the trash.

On social platforms, posts like "collection of travel disposable outfit links averaging 30 yuan" and "1688 vacation photo-ready long skirts for just 19 yuan" are common. Consumers buy through e-commerce platforms, clearance platforms, low-price offline stores, and some even buy others' worn disposable outfits at low prices on platforms like Xianyu. Beach trips favor high-saturation beach dresses and printed tube tops, ethnic-style regions favor ethnic shawls and hollow-out cover-up dresses, and theme parks commonly feature exaggerated cartoon T-shirts and sequined puffy skirts.

Merchants: scale driven by traffic投放, high sales accompanied by high returns

Zhou Ming, a shop owner who has operated in the "photo dress" category on e-commerce platforms for years, revealed that the store's monthly sales are stable at over 10,000 items, with bestsellers mostly between 20 and 50 yuan. Explosive orders mainly come from short video and livestream traffic, styles update extremely quickly, and customers basically don't come back after taking photos, with a repurchase rate of less than 10%. The core buyer group is young women aged 18 to 30, including students in third- and fourth-tier cities and workplace newcomers in first-tier cities; order volume rises noticeably in the two weeks before long holidays, and many buyers order multiple items at once, then decide which to keep and which to return after taking photos.

The other side of high sales is high returns. Zhou Ming said the industry return rate is generally between 30% and 50%, concentrated in inaccurate sizing, large color differences from the actual product, and poor fabric texture; to control costs, merchants either go for volume with extremely low pricing or mark "no seven-day no-reason returns" and only support exchanges to reduce after-sales disputes.

Another issue the industry is watching is fabric safety. According to product information and netizen sharing, disposable outfits are generally roughly made, easily damaged, deform after washing, and some emit a pungent odor upon opening the package.

Cai Shangwei, director of the Cultural Industry Research Center at Sichuan University and a member of the Decision-Making Advisory Committee of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee and Provincial Government, analyzed that disposable outfits are essentially single-use consumer products in the apparel sector, with logic similar to various disposable consumer goods, focusing on being brand new and clean at low cost and fitting short-term use needs; traditional garment making is oriented toward durability and wearability, and single-use ready-to-wear is hard to scale, but a complete modern industrial chain plus travel photography, gatherings, and social check-in demand have driven the development of this business format. He also stressed that "disposable beauty" must not come at the expense of skin health—clothing directly contacts the skin, and if dyes are excessive, formaldehyde remains, or pH levels are unqualified, it can easily cause contact dermatitis, allergies, and other problems.

He suggested strictly investigating merchants who refurbish defective clothing and pass off old items as new, improving disinfection and labeling standards for second-hand clothing, preventing merchants from using the disposable attribute to evade quality inspections, and requiring all clothing on sale to uniformly comply with national textile safety standards, especially strengthening safety spot checks on clothing that directly contacts the skin.

Source: "Disposable outfits" become National Day travel "photo神器" Expert reminds: beware of "disposable beauty" harming the skin | Cover Headline · Originally published 2026-10-05