Angel Chen and other independent designer fashion brands are making their debut at this season's Shanghai Fashion Week. Image source: Shanghai Fashion Week official website
China Daily Network, October 19, 2019 This week' Shanghai Fashion Week opened, as a communication platform for the development and promotion of China's original design, Chinese design brands shined. Foreign media believe that in recent years, whether on the catwalk of the world's four major fashion weeks or in the shows of major local fashion weeks, Chinese designers have begun to emerge, and Chinese designers can look forward to the future.
According to cnn network (CNN) website reported on the 18th, the 2019 spring and summer Shanghai Fashion Week once again proved that for those millennials who dare to express themselves and have a keen sense of fashion smell, the influence of these design rookies in China should not be underestimated.
Although not yet at the top of the world, Shanghai Fashion Week has grown rapidly since its inception in 2003, almost doubling in size in five years.
Shanghai street fashion may still be the world of hip-hop and Balenciaga-inspired sneakers, but on the shanghai fashion week runway, a group of original Chinese brands and emerging designers interpreted the true meaning of "Made in China" from multiple perspectives.
The influence of Chinese designers is growing day by day
Designer Susan Fang's highly anticipated fashion show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai is highly anticipated. Image source: Screenshot of CNN website
Independent designer Angela Chen made her successful debut at New York Fashion Week, capturing a large number of fans and becoming the focus of the camera. Susie Bubble, a British fashion blogger on red Instagram, has also shared Chinese designer brands such as Shushu/Tong and 8on8, the former of which has also been stationed in opening Ceremony, a well-known fashion boutique in the United States.
Redefining "Made in China"
Shanghai Fashion Week showcases the fashion tastes of China's "Gen Z" consumer groups. Image source: Screenshot of CNN website
China's fashion industry has been looking for designs that represent China, and domestic brands and designers are trying to tear off the labels of "Made in China" and "counterfeit and shoddy". To this end, a Chinese TV station this year created a fashion competition program called "Fashion Master", encouraging emerging designers to integrate traditional Chinese elements into the design field.
Many of the show's participating designers, including previous generations of young designers, used exaggerated and stark Chinese imagery in their work. But there is no doubt that the design on the Shanghai Fashion Week runway is more mature and sophisticated, but also more modern. This shift reveals growing confidence in contemporary Chinese designers.
The exhibition entitled "Contemporary Chinese Fashion under the Cultural Exchange between East and West" is thought-provoking and is a highlight of this year's Fashion Week. In this exhibition, Gao Xue, a finalist for the LVMH Prize for Young Designers, blends check elements with Chinese-inspired prints; menswear designer brand Pronounce has set up studios in Shanghai and Milan, and their works are both Milanese and Shanghainese.
On the runway, designer brand Samuel Gui Yang skillfully integrated Chinese disc buckles into women's tops; designer Chen Anqi adhered to the aesthetic concept of history colliding with the future, using Qing Dynasty dragon patterns to match men's tights; and designer Li Dongjun used Chinese elements and traditional cheongsams from the 1930s to show neutral and elegant beauty.
Aiming at millennials
Influential and selfies-loving millennials and Gen Z (young people born between the mid-1990s and 2010s) have been posting this high-profile fashion event on WeChat, Weibo and Douyin.
The New York Private Policy brand was founded by Li Haoran and Qu Siying, who graduated from parsons in the United States. Image source: Screenshot of CNN website
Platforms such as the Labelhood Avant-Garde Fashion Arts Festival, which is designed for avant-garde designers, are favored by young people with consumption potential and social media influence, allowing emerging designer brands such as Susan Fang and Pronounce to open up their popularity among future consumer groups.
Shanghai Fashion Week also cooperates with Tmall to open up online and offline. Tmall will expand traffic through special brand channels, bringing 20 designers to young consumers who are keen on online shopping.
"Sustainable" fashion
The Re-garment Bank makes garments from recycled, eco-friendly fabrics. Image source: Shanghai Fashion Week official website
At present, the fashion market is inexpensive to produce, FMCG fashion is within reach, and "sustainability" seems to be unpopular. But Shanghai Fashion Week continues and develops this concept as always, as both designers and fashion industry leaders recognize that China has great potential to mitigate environmental pollution in the fashion industry.
This season, women's wear brand Fake Natoo designer Zhang Na returned to the Shanghai Fashion Week show with her personal brand, Reclothing Bank. Her designs are made from recycled and eco-friendly fabrics. Previously, she also reached a cooperation with Starbucks and Hungry. This season, under the theme of "Heaven Sent", she blends waste cotton, linen, recycled PVC with fibers made from wood pulp, adding an elegance and a touch of color to sustainable fashion.
In the production sector, Yin Jiajue, general manager of a apparel company that works for brands such as Patagonia and Uniqlo, showed the audience how Chinese factories can be sustainable.