Actor Shawn Yue's streetwear label MADNESS closed its Tmall store after a scalper backlash

Hong Kong actor Shawn Yue (余文乐) launched streetwear label MADNESS in 2016, opening its first store in Beijing's Sanlitun and building a following on American-Japanese workwear aesthetics and collaborations with brands like N.HOOLYWOOD. At its peak, new drops drew long queues of buyers.

By January 2023, MADNESS quietly stopped operating its Tmall flagship store, and its only physical location in Sanlitun faced closure as its lease expired without renewal; staff would not confirm the closure when contacted, only saying to 'wait for official announcements.'

The brand had accumulated reputational damage well before the closure: consumer-tracked accounts documented apparent copying of designs from Japanese labels WTAPS and NEIGHBORHOOD, and buyers reported store staff pre-selling limited new releases to resellers before customers who had queued could buy them — after Yue himself was seen reposting inflated resale prices on Instagram, which read to fans as endorsing the scalping.

MADNESS's decline tracked a broader collapse of China's celebrity-founded streetwear scene after the pandemic, as neighbouring Sanlitun shops Popcorn and Juice also closed; but its added baggage of plagiarism claims and scalper-friendly optics made it a frequently cited example of a founder brand that never built a distinct identity beyond its celebrity name.