Tradition and trade take center stage at Shanghai Fashion Week
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Meticulously dressed-up fashionistas create a buzz in downtown Xintiandi, the main venue for the weeklong Shanghai Fashion Week.
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Shanghai Fashion Week winds up its eight-day Autumn-Winter 2019 season today with a growing force of domestic talent tipping the fashion scales.
For insiders, buyers, designers and stylists from home and abroad, the annual fashion festival has become a must-attend event.
It's never been easy for Chinese designers to scale the world’s fashion stage. One way they've stood out is by underlining China elements and designs, which was seen again at this year's event.
This time, up-and-coming designers are bringing diverse perspectives to interpret what "Made in China" truly means, instead of simply borrowing Oriental themes as they did in the past.
Inspired by the Qiang ethnic group in the Aba Tibetan areas, the brand Labelhood's Autumn-Winter collection featured bold and bright colors in a salute to the ancient nomadic tribe’s folk culture. In addition to wool, the brand for the first time used elements such as fringe and handmade Indian embroidery.
MUKZIN is an emerging local brand which deconstructs Chinese traditional culture, and explores possibilities to express it in a new aesthetic language.
Its couture series mixes elements of female folk opera roles into its men’s suits, delivering a message of feminine identification.
“Traditional culture is a treasure house for us, not shackles of innovation,” said the brand’s designer Han Wen. “Time has changed, and so has the culture. We need to keep innovating to design what is more close to today’s real life, while still carrying forward the traditional culture.”
Young designers from Shanghai International College of Fashion and Innovation, Donghua University, made their debut at this year's Fashion Week. Their works featured Indonesian batik dyeing, glacier textures and recycled clothes.
Designer Yang Xiaoyu’s work features China-chic street-style fashion with Peking Opera elements.
“Young designers today have a broader global vision and cultural self-esteem,” said professor Chen Bin from Donghua University. “Traditional culture has been their self-exploration, self-expression and self-play, not a heavy, serious set of symbols.”
Brisk business
As Shanghai Fashion Week comes to a close, its associated business continued to grow this season after numerous runway shows, “presentations” from young talent, as well as various showrooms and trade fairs, where hundreds of brands were able to meet buyers from China’s booming multi-brand boutiques and online stores.
There was also the 10th edition of Ontimeshow, one of the Asia’s largest fashion trade fairs. The fair has expanded from only 48 brands five years ago to today’s more than 400. Covering six exhibition halls, the event attracted over 12,000 visitors.
The Mode Shanghai Fashion Trade Show offers another free platform for buyers and designers from all over the world.
This was the third year for the brand Pingsi Zhou to attend Mode. “I’ve been growing fast by directly facing clients and the market over the years,” said the brand’s founder and designer Zhou Pingsi.
Coffee Psycho, an environmentally-friendly brand that makes clothes and socks with coffee grounds and corn stalks, attended Mode for the first time and its founder Felix never expected so much attention for his products. “I’ve got orders from more than 200 buyers, and a famous New York-based buyer ordered more than 500 products,” he said. “I’m sure to come next year.”
Mode has been growing with Fashion Week and young designers as well over the years. “Mode is the incubator for young, start-up Chinese brands, as well as a frontier for foreign fashion brands to test the water in the China market,” said Zhang Jie, the trade show’s director.
With the high-speed development of the country’s fashion industry, Shanghai is building itself into a global fashion hub.
Statistics from the Shanghai Commission of Commerce reveal that more than 800 major fashion brands chose the city to open their first store last year, and over 3,000 brands made world debuts of their new collections in Shanghai.
“Shanghai Fashion Week is stepping into a new era of high quality, efficiency and power,” said Liu Min, deputy director of the Shanghai Commission of Commerce. “It will be a more open platform to link fashion resources and explore symbiotic channels to support talented designers and start-up brands through trade show business and events.”
Ontimeshow has become one of Asia’s largest fashion trade fairs.
