During the "two sessions" in Shanghai this year, Xu Xiaoliang, deputy to the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress and co-CEO of Fosun International, put forward suggestions to help Shanghai build an international fashion capital, enhance soft power, and further promote the construction of the Huangpu Dayu Garden Area.
In 2017, Shanghai issued the "50 Articles of Cultural Creativity", which clearly proposed to create a "design capital, fashion capital and brand capital", of which "fashion capital" is a clear positioning of Shanghai's urban image. Four years later, Shanghai put forward the "Opinions on Planting the Spirit of the City to Highlight the Character of the City and Comprehensively Enhance the Soft Power of Shanghai City", and the relevant work around the promotion of "soft power" is being carried out in an all-round way.
Xu Xiaoliang compared and analyzed the historical formation of the world's five major fashion capitals, and found that they can become common elements of international fashion capitals, including policy support, financial support, talent introduction, brand agglomeration, strong supply chain and so on. At the same time, these cities have also combined their local characteristics and resource advantages to form a differentiated competitive pattern, such as Paris is positioned as the birthplace of haute couture, Milan is the capital of haute couture, London is the capital of creative design, New York focuses on popular fashion, and Tokyo is positioned as the capital of Asian design.
He believes that as a leading city in China's economic development, Shanghai also has the gene of fashion. It not only has the heritage of oriental culture and a huge consumer market, but also has a rich supply guarantee of raw materials and a digital foundation that combines online and offline, and it also has the advantage of being a latecomer in the industry. In recent years, more and more international designers and brands have begun to gather in Shanghai, where a series of international fashion activities such as Shanghai Fashion Week and Couture Week have blossomed.
Xu Xiaoliang believes that the Yuyuan Garden Phase I, Yuyuan Garden Phase II and the Fuyou Land Plot with the largest remaining volume and the highest density in Huangpu District of Shanghai, together with BFC, the overall shape can be regarded as a "city catwalk", which is currently the best overall and largest regional cultural characteristics area in the central urban area, and it is also a new cover for the future urban development of Shanghai, which can carry more historical missions and core functions.
Aiming at the construction goals of the international design capital, the fashion capital and the brand capital, Xu Xiaoliang suggested that in the creation of space scenes, as a whole, the Dayu Garden area needs to start with the end, plan once, and implement step by step. In terms of cultural atmosphere shaping, at present, Yuyuan Garden Phase I focuses on traditional Jiangnan customs, which is the link between folklore and trends, nationality and the world, and Yuyuan Phase II can focus on the original debut concept, which will become the stage for Chinese designer brands to go to the world. At the same time, in terms of fashion industry agglomeration, we should give full play to the strength of the Shanghai International Fashion Federation, take the area as the base point, build a demonstration area of fashion capital, create the only couture incubation platform in Asia, continue to lead the development of large-scale fashion activities with global influence, and help Shanghai become a world-class fashion capital.
Author: Xu Jinghui
Editor: Liu Liyuan, Zhu Wei, He Yi
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