Yao Wan
Now Hong Kong is back in the spotlight. As early as when the variety show "Endless Sound" was broadcast, there was a boom of discussion on social media. Music, movies and TV series work together to shape the city's impression, and the resulting visual identity, including celebrity wear and a series of brands with fire, creates the concept of "Hong Kong Fashion".
It is difficult to generalize what constitutes "Hong Kong fashion", after all, Hong Kong's local fashion styles are subdivided into a variety of styles.
For example, the traditional "Hong Kong style" defined by veteran movie stars such as Zhou Huimin refers to the pure and retro girl's dress style. This is the most widely accepted and disseminated Hong Kong fashion. Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung and Cheng Sau Man's looks on stage come from local and international luxury brands, and are more daring and pioneering, and people also assume that this is part of Hong Kong fashion.
In any case, what many agree with is that the appeal of Hong Kong fashion comes from the urban culture that flourished from the 1950s and 1960s, as well as its geographical and cultural location as a meeting point between East and West. This allows Hong Kong fashion to maintain its own vitality while radiating its influence throughout Asia.
The fashion exhibition CENTRESTAGE was born out of this cultural background. Its predecessor was the Hong Kong International Fashion Gathering, organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, which was renamed in 2016 and moved from January to September each year. Different from the more commercial "Hong Kong Fashion Festival", CENTRESTAGE is mainly marketing, and the purpose is mainly to promote designer brands.
But interestingly, as a fashion event initiated from Hong Kong, the number of local brands participating in CENTRESTAGE is often equal to that of brands from other countries and regions around the world.
Take the upcoming 8th edition of CENTRESTAGE, which will be held from September 6 to 9, 2023, as an example, with the participants from local designer brands REDEMPTIVE, Absurd Laboratory and Róu So, as well as Earlyink and Pei-wen Jin from Macau and Taiwan, and FETICO and XAVAN from Japan and Vietnam.
It is clear that Hong Kong is now more proactive in asserting its position in the global fashion industry.
This is a clear difference from the past. In the 1980s and 1990s, Hong Kong fashion was mostly exported with the help of entertainment industries such as music and film, and the unconscious color was strong. That was the era when the Hong Kong fashion label began to take shape.
Similar to fashion forces such as Japan and South Korea, which were also born in Asia, Hong Kong fashion also started from undertaking the clothing manufacturing industry. When the industry has entered a mature and even saturated period, many Hong Kong factories have begun to expand their high-value-added business based on their own brands, mainly to seek more opportunities outside the smaller Hong Kong market.
So we can see that after the 1980s, Hong Kong brands such as Baleno, Castle Lion Dragon, Crocodile, Giordano and so on began to rise intensively. These brands took advantage of the reform and opening up to open stores and expand in the mainland, jointly shaping people's initial memories of Hong Kong fashion, and are the public and local side of Hong Kong fashion.
The other side is shaped by high-end boutiques such as I.T, Joyce and Lane Crawford. They represent the aesthetics and lifestyles of the middle class and above, and not only introduced international luxury brands and designer brands to Hong Kong, but also served as the first stronghold for many street fashion brands to take root in Asia.
The story of Joyce founder Ma Guo Zhiqing is often told. In 1971, she opened a boutique under her English name at the Mandarin Oriental, foreseeing the designs of Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake back to Hong Kong. Hong Kong columnist Jin Qingsong once wrote that walking down the street with a Joyce paper bag printed with green, white, coffee and black stripes is definitely superior.
So far, Hong Kong has formed a well-established fashion industry chain, covering the upstream, midstream and downstream from production to sales, and a large number of public relations planning companies and trading companies have brought diversified activities and rich brand portfolios.
However, if you look closely, although Hong Kong fashion has crossed the public to the high-end, this step is very large, and the local brands with mid-range and mid-to-high-end positioning are in a relatively weak position.
With the changes in consumer preferences and social culture, Hong Kong has begun to rethink how to position "Hong Kong fashion".
In 2016, the then Financial Secretary of Hong Kong, Mr Tsang Chun-wah, announced in his annual budget that HK$500 million would be set aside to promote fashion development globally, set up a designer training programme, and provide technical resources for designers. It was also an opportunity for CENTRESTAGE to become an important part of Hong Kong's fashion industry.
After all, nurturing new talent is an effective way to inject momentum into the industry.
BUT CENTRESTAGE ALSO HAS NEW IDEAS. Rather than devoting all resources to supporting independent designer brands born in Hong Kong, attracting the participation of brands from different countries and regions is actually more reflective of Hong Kong's positioning as an international city. It's also a way to export Hong Kong fashion to the outside world.
Launching designer awards is the most common tool, and winners can get a range of industry resources, such as internships at the headquarters of famous brands, overseas exchanges, and the launch of limited collaborations with well-known boutique brands. IN ADDITION, CENTRESTAGE PROVIDES EXPOSURE OPPORTUNITIES FOR MANY BRANDS.
REDEMPTIVE AND FETICO WERE INVITED TO DEBUT AT THE CENTRESTAGE FASHION SHOW, "CENTRESTAGE ELITES," WHICH UNVEILED CENTRESTAGE IN SEPTEMBER, AND WERE BROADCAST LIVE ON MULTIPLE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS. The subsequent "Fashion Hong Kong Runway Show" will feature the spring/summer 2024 collection by 112 mountainyam, ANGUS TSUI, DORISKATH and SUN=SEN, four brands that have participated in international fashion weeks.
Many of these designer brands have established their own style and popularity, and have relatively stable sales channels. One of the purposes of their participation in CENTRESTAGE is to reflect the international character of the brand. For brands from outside Hong Kong, this is also a springboard to the mainland market to some extent.
It's not just a gathering of designer brands, though. Almost all fashion fairs, including the four major international fashion weeks, attract a large number of media, buyers and other industry organizations. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University's School of Fashion and Textiles, the Hong Kong Design Institute and Hong Kong wool and chemical knitting manufacturers are all participants in CENTRESTAGE, and with the opening of borders, Japanese and Korean institutions and fashion showrooms will reappear after a three-year absence.
The data shows that from 2019 to 2022, despite the impact of several waves of the epidemic, the number of brands participating in CENTRESTAGE has increased from 235 to 243, and the net exhibition area has also expanded from 1199 square meters to 1684 square meters. Recognition from brands and markets has clearly been established.
The most important thing is confidence.
IN ADDITION TO CENTRESTAGE'S ABILITY TO POOL VARIOUS RESOURCES AND IMPLEMENT THEM, MORE IMPORTANTLY, HONG KONG ITSELF HAS MANY MARKET ADVANTAGES THAT ARE DIFFICULT TO REPLACE. More importantly, Hong Kong's position in international trade remains solid and cannot be ignored by the market.
As an international free trade port, Hong Kong also has higher costs and flexibility in terms of taxation and warehousing. These unique advantages have not only attracted a large number of international fashion brands to Hong Kong, but also attracted many cross-border e-commerce, which is another important helper for independent designer brands to expand their business in addition to boutiques.
As fashion projects such as CENTRESTAGE support more and more well-known independent designers, the image of Hong Kong fashion has become fuller. As a result, many fashion brands are willing to continue to invest in the Hong Kong market for the long term and remain optimistic about the prospects here. This includes many luxury brands that are quite critical of the market environment.
Chanel recently leased a two-storey duplex shop of approximately 1,765 square metres at the Jinghua Centre on Jardine Street in Causeway Bay and a six-storey advertising façade along the street for a monthly rent of approximately HK$3 million, with a lease period of up to May 2023 to May 2026, followed by two three-year renewals with a maximum total lease period of up to 9 years.
This is the highest rental shop leasing case in Hong Kong since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. Hong Kong has one of the highest concentrations of Chanel stores in the world, with 8 CHANEL boutiques and 2 shoe stores. In fact, over the past few years, international luxury brands have maintained a high profile in Hong Kong.
What can be seen is that several luxury brands, including Louis Vuitton, Prada and Valentino, closed their stores in commercial districts such as Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui in early 2020. But starting in 2021, many luxury brands have randomly returned in the form of holding flagship stores.
The first is Hermes, whose flagship store in Harbour City reopened in late 2020. Dior then opened the largest flagship store in Hong Kong in Harbour City, and CASA LOEWE, also located in Harbour City, is also a double-store. Other luxury brands that have opted to open a large flagship store in Tsim Sha Tsui include Piaget , Van Cleef & Arpels and De Beers.
It's not just luxury brands, but over the past three years, one can also see that the fashion retail experience offered by Hong Kong to consumers is developing in a more diversified direction.
As luxury goods gradually began to shift from street shops to shopping malls, the large street shops that had been vacated were now filled by more medium-sized brands. Previously, Li Ning rented a double-storey store of about 630 square meters in Xingang Center at a rent of HK$2 million (about 1.83 million yuan) per month. Kiyoshi Matsumoto, a Japanese beauty collection brand, rented a 540-square-metre store on Campari Road in Tsim Sha Tsui.
After international tourism and customs clearance from the Mainland, the recovery of Hong Kong's fashion retail industry has become even more rapid.
According to data from the Immigration Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, after full customs clearance on February 6, the number of visitors to Hong Kong in February alone reached 1.46 million, the first time in three years that the number of visitors to Hong Kong exceeded one million in a single month. Developers, including Hang Lung Properties and Hongkong Land, have told Interface Fashion that the growth of foot traffic in their Hong Kong malls is obvious.
Even before the full customs clearance resumed, a number of landmark retail properties in Hong Kong were already showing signs of renewed growth. Several high-end shopping malls, including Harbour City, began to record growth of 1% to 5%. In the latest financial report for the first half of 2023 released by its parent company Wharf, Harbour City's revenue and net profit in the first half of the year increased by 9% and 16% respectively, and the occupancy rate reached 96%.
According to Swire Properties' financial report, Pacific Plaza in Admiralty had an occupancy rate of 97% in the first half of 2023 and retail sales growth of 59.5%. Hang Lung Properties is reluctant to have luxury retail projects in Hong Kong, but sales and sales rentals at Hang Lung Center in Hong Kong also increased by 22% and 40%, respectively.
Blondie Tsang, chairman of Lane Crawford Group, said that since February, the spending volume of mainland visitors holding the highest VIP membership card in Hong Kong has shown a double-digit increase week-on-week. There is no doubt that the strong retail performance proves that Hong Kong remains a glittering international fashion city.
This may be why Hong Kong's fashion industry is still worth watching. A place like Tsim Sha Tsui can open a large luxury flagship store spanning several floors, as well as a home for many mid-range fashion brands and smaller local brands. Even in the past, the industry can bounce back quickly when the opportunity arises.
Despite the various reports over the years, fashion brands still see it as a gateway to China and a cultural and trade hub in the Asia-Pacific region. The history of the convergence of Eastern and Western cultures has fostered Hong Kong's eclectic fashion spirit, which by extension is the root of its continued prosperity across different stages of its history.
To be sure, Hong Kong's title as Asia's fashion capital continues to strengthen as Hong Kong's shortcomings in nurturing independent designer brands have been filled, and luxury consumption is still thriving and continues to boom. After decades of star-studded life, Hong Kong continues its golden fashion dream.
This is why Interface Fashion chose to jointly hold the "Interface Fashion Power Festival" with CENTRESTAGE in Hong Kong. With the resumption of full customs clearance and immigration exchanges, the status of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, including Hong Kong, is also rapidly improving.
From Loro Piana to Ralph Lauren to Dior and Chanel, a number of heavyweight brands have landed or plan to land major events in the GBA in 2023. As a free trade port, Hong Kong has naturally become one of the important nodes connecting brands and consumers. The Asia-Pacific headquarters of many brands are still based in Hong Kong.
Now is the time to resume communication and plan for the future, and the "Interface Fashion Festival" plays the role of communicator, gathering many well-known and cutting-edge brands at home and abroad to discuss the new possibilities of the development of China's fashion industry under the development pattern of the new era.
In addition to inviting fashion industry traders to share their insights in the form of keynote speeches, the roundtable forum of this grand event will also provide an in-depth analysis of hot topics in the market. The "Interface Fashion Festival" will be held at 09:30 on 7 September at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (1 Expo Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong SAR), and visitors who cannot attend can also learn about the relevant content through online channels.