From a Mountainside to Mix Selection: Our Founder's Story, as Told by SCMP

Huang Xuanni, then and now.

We're honoured to share that South China Morning Post recently profiled the woman behind Mix Selection, Huang Xuanni, and the path that led her here.

Neo-Chinese dress, the idea Mix Selection is built on, takes the standing collar, the knot button, the side opening, and the mineral colors of older garments and cuts them for a body that lives in cities now. The cloth is often a silk or a silk-like weave, because that was the material of the robes these shapes descend from, but the fit is sized for a petite frame rather than for a ceremonial silhouette. Huang’s early years photographing the clothes herself are still visible in that standard. The garment had to explain itself in a picture before it had a shop window.

The scale that followed, a community of nearly two million and a brand selling well beyond its first Taobao stall, did not change the original constraint. Small sizes, a careful color, a collar that sits cleanly. The public story is about endurance. The clothes are the practical version of the same idea: hold the standard, and keep making the next piece.

Huang grew up in rural Binzhou, Hunan province, the sixth of seven children in a family that prized sons. As SCMP reports, she often ate alone and was, at one especially difficult point in her childhood, left on a mountainside while ill before a passer-by brought her home. She went on to study animal science at Hunan Agricultural University, then moved to Shenzhen for a job in logistics after marrying — a marriage that ended in divorce after a period of hardship.

Graduation.

In 2015, with just 50,000 yuan (about US$7,200), Huang and a friend bought a batch of small-sized women's clothing and opened a shop on Taobao, photographing the pieces herself. Early momentum gave way to a serious setback in 2017 — a five million yuan debt and the loss of many customers. Rather than walk away, she spent the next years studying brand management, business and design.

Before the brand.

In 2020, that groundwork became Mix Selection: a brand built around quality materials, elegant fit for petite frames, and a neo-Chinese aesthetic that blends traditional silk craftsmanship with modern design. By late 2023, our neo-Chinese dresses alone had crossed 8.7 million yuan in sales, and Huang cleared the debt from those earlier years in full.

The clothes, worn.

What SCMP's piece captures well is the part of the story that doesn't show up in a sales figure: showing up for customers directly, on social media, day after day, until a following became a community. By 2025, that community had grown to nearly two million, and Mix Selection's annual sales had surpassed 250 million yuan (roughly US$36 million).

The Mix Selection team.

Huang put it simply in the piece: "Just hold on a little longer and there is hope."

Huang Xuanni, in the profile.

It's a line we think about often here — and it's part of why Mix Selection exists in the first place. Read the full profile at South China Morning Post.