Contemporary Chinese Fashion Design

A Brief History of the Chinese Fashion Industry

Before 1949
The Chinese fashion industry started to emerge in the mid-to-late 19th century primarily in the city of Shanghai. By the 1940s, Shanghai had established its own fashion system that spanned from textile millers to advertisement to department stores all the way to local Chinese fashion brands.

The first firm to use the term ‘fashion (Shizhuang),’ was a company called Hongxiang, which founded the Shanghai Hong Xiang Women’s Tailor’s (Shanghai Hongxiang Nvzi Xifudian) shop in 1917, and later changed their name to Shanghai Hong Xiang Fashion Firm (Shanghai Hongxiang Shizhuang Gongsi) in 1928.

The 1920s to 1940s were considered peak times for the fashion industry in Shanghai before the establishment of PRC. Designers gained inspiration from Hollywood movies, by observing the fashion of people on the street, and by reading European fashion magazines like Bazaar and Vogue purchased directly from Europe. Top local fashion companies formed their own guild called “Shanghai Fashion Guild (Shanghai Shizhuang Gongye Tonghui),’ and the main goal of the guild was to serve the members in trend forecasting, business development, negotiations with government policy, labor issues, and coordination between companies, if there were any issues among them.

Mao’s era (1950s-1970s)
From the 1950s to the1970s, the term ‘fashion’ gradually faded away from the public
domain. Primarily, this happened because of the exacerbating economic infrastructure after the civil war between the Communist Party (Gongchan Dang) and the National Party (Guomin Tang) (1929-1945), the Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945), as well as fashion’s association with the bourgeois. The catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) uniformed people’s wardrobes: the outfits of people became identical: military green, blue, and grey uniforms.

In 1956 the Chinese government merged all the private businesses into state-owned
enterprises. All the private fashion firms established and developed before 1949 became a part of state-owned businesses, and were converted to manufacturing-centered businesses.

1980s
In 1979, Pierre Cardin brought a team of French fashion models and paraded the first
fashion show in China since a post-Mao era. ‘Fashion’, a term that had been removed
from the stage for nearly 30 years, was now back in China.

In 1980, the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts (now the Faculty of Fine Arts, Tsing
Hua University) founded the first clothing design program at a higher-education level, resulting in several other colleges and universities following suit. This occasion marks the birth of the profession of ‘clothing designer’ in China. The first fashion modeling team, post-Mao, was established in Shanghai by Shanghai Garment Group (Shanghai Fuzhuang Jituan) in 1980.

The first fashion magazine in China post-Mao was launched in 1980 and was called Shizhuang (fashion). In 1988 the first international fashion magazine landed in post-Mao China – Elle. In the same year, the first fashion week was launched
in the North-east city of Dalian. Even though at the time it was still called ‘fashion
festival,’ it was more like a carnival for entertaining the tourists rather than a commercial event to promote the designers and their brands.

Another remarkable international fashion event for China in the 1980s was the Shanghai designer Chen Shanhua’s fashion show presentation at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. This was the first (mainland) Chinese designer to display Chinese fashion design to an international audience in post-Mao era.

1990s:
The market-oriented economic reform conducted since early 1990s urged the booming of private businesses. Many of the successful fashion brands and designers we are familiar with today started their business in this time period.

Several events stimulated the emergence of Chinese fashion designers. In 1993, the China Expo of Clothing and Accessories (CHIC) that aims at promoting the Chinese clothing brands and designers was launched. In the same year, CHIC launched the ‘Brother Cup’ fashion design contest, sponsored by the Japanese sewing machine vender ‘Brother’.

Together with ‘China Cup’ launched by Shanghai Fashion Week in 1995, the two fashion design contests were widely regarded as the most prominent fashion design contests in China as many of its champions would go on to become the pundits of the Chinese fashion industry.

In 1995, the CHIC launched a ‘Famous Label Strategy (Mingpai Zhanlue)’. This strategy aimed to escalate the position of designers by propelling collaborations between respected designers and large clothing companies. A trend of partnerships between designers and clothing companies was in vogue, and the most significant of these partnerships was the ‘marriage’ between designer Wang Xinyuan, Zhang Zhaoda and the then-largest men’s business suit manufacturer, Shanshan. In 1996, Shanshan launched a large advertisement campaign that sought out chief designers for their couture fashion line ‘Firs’ by offering them an annual remuneration of one million RMB. At the time, the average annual salary in Shanghai was approximately ten thousand RMB. This campaign dramatically increased the salary expectations for designers, and designers, as well as others working in the industry, realized that a designer could be a profitable career, too,

since before this, designers were often seen as the equivalent of tailors. However, the majority of the ‘marriages’ proved to be failures in the end as the result of a set of
complicated reasons, primarily resulting from the immaturity of the fashion system as a whole, including design, branding, distribution and consumption.

In 1997, ‘China Fashion Week’ – the first major event focusing on promoting fashion
designers – was launched in Beijing. ‘Golden Award’, which is the most prestige award
that to reward the best designer in the country every year was launched in the same year.

Now, China Fashion Week is the main stage for Chinese designers to present their
collections. In 1994, the Singapore Lasalle Group initiated a collaboration with Dong Hua University (then China Textile University) in Shanghai. This was the first overseas fashion school established in China. Laselle brought in teachers from overseas, and provided a totally new teaching module to students.

21st century – The contemporary Chinese fashion system
Alongside the ‘China craze’ that has taken over in the 21st century, which primarily
attributed to the increasingly growing economy and its massive scale, the ‘China craze’ also brought tremendous opportunities to Chinese fashion and its designers.

There are two words that precisely describe the changes within Chinese fashion and its system since the start of the 21st century: ‘transition’ and ‘transformation’.

Transition
From ‘manufacturing center’ to ‘consumption center’
An apparent transition happening in the 21st century was that China was transitioning from a global manufacturing center to a global consumption center – primarily attributed to the growing purchasing power of Chinese consumers. Today, China is an indispensable market for international fashion brands.

From ‘foreign brands’-centric to ‘Chinese brands’-centric
In the1980s and 1990s, Chinese consumers had begun to show a stronger commitment to foreign-designed and made products – they seemed to believe that anything made in ‘foreign countries’ was superior to the domestic products available within their own country. As a matter of fact, most of the so-called ‘foreign brands’ were totally, 100% designed and produced in China. The vendors simply attached a label in a foreign language, and most of the time, no one really understood what language it was or what it meant, but nonetheless, consumers remained under the impression that they were consuming foreign goods. Even today, there are still a large number of Chinese fashion brands that have assigned a ‘foreign name’ to their labels, as well as registering their labels in France, Italy and other major countries and claim to be ‘international brands’.

Citing the exact same reasons, both the distributors and fashion media alike like to assign their focus to international or foreign brands.

By the 21st century, some Chinese consumers began to appreciate the value of local
Chinese fashion brands, especially the designers’ collections. Distributors and retailers, too, began to pay more attention to local brands. Today, local Chinese fashion brands are a considerable force in the Chinese market.

Transformation
From an isolated player in the Chinese community to an active player on the
international stage In the 1980s and 1990s, the whole Chinese fashion system – from education, to design, to distribution, to fashion week and consumption – was still in a relatively isolated domain, and there was very limited interaction between the Chinese fashion system and the international fashion world. By the 21st century, primarily attributed to the openness of the country and the globalized age, the Chinese fashion system had been actively engaging itself in the global fashion dialogue, including both inviting international professionals into the country, as well as sending professional talent to other major fashion cities. A significant example of this is the frequent presence of Chinese fashion designers at the top four international fashion capitals (New York, London, Milan and Paris).

From ‘homogeny’ to ‘diversity’
In the1980s and 1990s, the general fashion industry was still quite homogenous with
regard to its design, business models, fashion reports and critiques. By the 21st century, the styles in all aspects had become diversified. One apparent example is the diversification of retail modules. In the 1980s and 1990s, the major retail markets were primarily dominated by state-owned department stores. After the 21st century, however, foreign investors flocked in and began bringing in different business modules and philosophies into retail management, shopping malls, online shopping, TV shopping, catalogue shopping and fashion specialty stores, and now all have begun to emerge onto the scene.

The Three Generations of Chinese Fashion Designers and Their Design Signatures
Since the post-Mao era, from the 1980s to the present, 21st century, Chinese designers can be grouped into three generations based on timing.

The first generation
Most designers of the first generation were born in the 1950s and early 1960s, and
received their higher educations in the early 1980s. These designers grew up in an era of anti-bourgeois and a completely ‘socialist’ environment. They received the most rigorous patriotic education at school during this time, and as a likely result, they respected the design principle of ‘the national is the international (Minzu de Jiushi Shijie de)’.

Also affected by the lack of information at the time, Chinese designers often sought inspiration from the historical Chinese arts, costumes and culture. Therefore their designs often carried some very typical Chinese symbols in concrete form, like the Cheong Sam (Qipao), which is widely seen as one of the main stereotypes of Chinese dress. Other examples include dragons, peonies, Chinese calligraphy/painting, and Chinese historical heritage like the Dun Huang cave, the Qin Soldiers and the Forbidden City.

Another feature of this generation of designers is that most of them became famous
through fashion design contests and or extravagant fashion shows rather than through operating successful brands in the market. In particular, the winners of the
aforementioned ‘Brother Cup’ and ‘China Cup’ received immediate media exposure
directly after winning the contest. Through the intensive media reports, the designers became well-known overnight. With the ‘fame’, award winners either eventually started their own businesses or worked for large clothing enterprises. However, only a small number of winners actually successfully sustained their businesses in the long run. The majority of the designers faded away from the spotlight because of their eventual failure in business. Some designers sustained their ‘fame’ by continuing to provide extravagant fashion shows to the public. In the 1980s and 1990s, the majority of the shows mislead audience members to believe that fashion was an artistic endeavor rather than daily wear for people. Therefore, in the 1980s and 1990s, a popular title for Chinese fashion designers was ‘show’ designers.

The most famous and well-known designers in the first generation are Zhang Zhaoda, Wang Xinyuan and Wu Haiyan. Zhang is a designer who typically immersed himself into Chinese culture, and always obtained his inspirations from Chinese and ethnic tribal culture. He was also the first winner and recipient of the ‘Golden Award’. His design style on stage is very theatrical and extravagant. Zhang himself is still very active today, while the majority of his generation has faded away from this arena. Wang was also one of the first designers to launch the professional executive suits for Chinese women. His private label Singyuan was once very successful when it was launched in the beginning of the 1990s, but soon after, his business was disrupted by the ubiquitous distribution of illegal copies of his design, which is still one of the major factors that affecting the business of Chinese designers today. Wu Haiyan has been very active and prominent in both the academy and the industry. Wu graduated from the best arts university in China – China Academy of Arts, and has remained there since. She now is the dean of the School of Design at China Academy of Arts. Wu was the first victor of the ‘Brother Cup’ fashion design contest, and her signature design is contemporary elegant design on silk. She also favors traditional handcraftsmanship, especially those that are very distinguished.

Other prominent designers in this generation who are still active in the fashion industry today include the made-to-measure couture designer Guo Pei, who likes to include the most sumptuous fabrics and most intricate craftsmanship into her design.

Liu Yang is another designer who is noteworthy. Born in 1969, Liu began to receive some attention from the media when he won a national design contest. It was not until later that he did his first fashion show in a hotel in Guangzhou in the early 1990s, when there were only a few designers at the time who were doing so. He immediately became ‘famous’ as a result of his daring design.

The second generation
Most of the designers of the second generation were born in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When they entered their adulthood China was just about to booming in economy.

Some of the designers started their own labels in the mid-1990s up until the early 21st century, which marks the start of the rapidly growing phase of the economy in China.

Successful designers and their labels include Ma Ke and her ‘Exceptions’ line, (co-founded with Mao Jihong), Liang Zi, as well as her ‘Tangy’ brand (co-founded with her
husband), Wang Yiyang and his Zuczug (co-founded with his business partner).

Unlike the designers of the first generation who liked to inject Chinese culture in a concrete way using symbolic forms, the second generation still favored the ‘Chinese’ culture, but in a more ‘conceptual’ and ‘spiritual’ way (in contrast with the ‘concrete’ form). Instead of directly borrowing symbolic elements from Qipao, historical costumes, Chinese calligraphy and painting, these designers adopted the Chinese core philosophy of ‘harmony (Hexie)’ for their design principles, and as a result their work normally yielded a flavor of ‘peace’ or ‘calm’. Instead of sourcing inspiration from ancient Chinese heritage, the younger designers shifted their perspective to modern Chinese life, getting inspired by their memories of childhood, food, landscape, and games.

The primary signature of this generation is an invoking of the ‘Chinese spirit,’ but in a contemporary, cutting form. Compared to their predecessors, most of the second generation gained their fame through operating successful businesses, either by working for large clothing companies or by establishing their own private labels. The success is primarily attributed to their growing ability as fashion designers as well as the increasing purchasing power from consumers, since designer brands are more expensive, and difficult to afford.

Aside from the designers and brands mentioned above, another note-worthy designer of this generation is Uma Wang (Wang Zhi), who obtained her Bachelor’s degree from Shanghai Dong Hua University and Master’s degree in Knitwear from the Central Saint Martin College of Art and Design. She founded her line, Uma Wang, in 2005. While designers of her generation normally developed and concentrated on their businesses in the Chinese market, Wang had been working with international buyers since her beginnings as a designer, and directly expanded her business internationally. She most likely will become the first (mainland) Chinese designer who operates a successful international business.

The third generation
When the 21st century started, the generation that was born since the one-child policy entered their first career. Unlike the previous generations, who mostly shared the same monotonous careers and life pathways, this generation’s background was much more versatile. They either received their education in China or went to international fashion schools to study fashion design. This generation grew up in a more globalized and internet-savvy age, where the information that flows from overseas to China is no longer stagnant, but instant. Also easy travel to other countries enhanced and widened their views of designs.

Compared to the previous two generations, an obvious change in this generation is their design signature rarely shows the obvious ‘Chineseness,’ either in symbols or in
conception. Rather, ‘Chinese identity’ has become a marketing tactic to obtain attention from the international media because of the ‘China craze’. Still, their design signatures become much more vibrant and diversified. Although it is difficult to define any leading figures from this generation quite yet, there are still several names worthy of mentioning.

Masha Ma, Haizheng Wang, Zhang Huishan, Fan Ran, Wan Yifang, who all graduated
from the Central Saint Martin College of Art and Design, started their own businesses, and received some attention from both international and domestic media. Xander Zhou and Zhang Chi both received their educations from the Institute of Maragoni, and focus on menswear design. Compared to designers who are studying in China, Chinese designers who studied and developed overseas, especially in top schools and fashion capitals, have the advantage of more direct access to the international fashion network, and thus receive more attention. Though their design does not show that they are from China anymore, but they still need to establish their personal identities in the competitive international market.

Shangguan Zhe is another Chinese designer who received attention from the public in the last several years. He earned his first buck by selling his design on the largest Chinese ecommerce website – Alibaba/Taobao, the equivalent of Ebay, and he established his couture line of Sankuanz in 2013. Sankuanz mixes many cultures: black, Japanese, Chinese and European, and engenders a sense of quirkiness and humor – which is not very usual in Chinese culture, as China is not typically known as a nation with a strong sense of humor. Shangguan was sponsored by GQ in 2014, and presented at London Fashion Week as well.

There is a team of ‘internet-designer-brands’ in China who also run very successful
businesses. By taking advantage of the popularity of internet shopping, particularly since 2008 after the economic crisis, these designers started to sell their own products on Taobao, and obtained their fame and first buck as a result. In fact, some of their annual turnovers were over 100 million RMB (approximately 15 million USD) 3 years after their initial startup. This growth speed has rarely been achieved in a traditional offline retail module. The internet not only changed the shopping behavior of consumers, but also provided a platform for young Chinese designers to launch their businesses in a relatively low-cost way. Stereotypes of this group of designer brands include Artka and Liebo.

“Milestone” Designers

Cheng Shanhua
Cheng Shanhua was the first (mainland) Chinese designer who presented contemporary Chinese fashion internationally in Paris in 1987.

Frankie Xie Feng
Frankie was the first (mainland) Chinese designer who showed in the top four
international fashion weeks at Paris in 2006. Frankie worked for Kenzo in Tokyo, Paris
and Hong Kong for nearly 10 years before he established his private label Jefen in 2000.

Jefen is now one of the most commercially successful designer brands in China.

Ma Ke
Ma Ke co-founded the brand ‘Exception’ with Mao Jihong in 1996. Exception is widely
regarded as the first contemporary Chinese fashion designer label because of its clear personal identity, but at the same time, absence of any obvious Chinese symbols, as designers before her did. Exception has been operating very successfully in terms of
business as well.

The success of the brand has set up an expectation for its descendants.

In 2006, Ma Ke left Exception and started another label called ‘Wuyong’. Wuyong,
literally means ‘useless’ in Chinese, and aims to preserve traditional craftsmanship by integrating disappearing craft of hand-work into modern design. Ma is also the first (mainland) Chinese designer who showed at Paris Fashion Week in the Haute Couture category. She also designs for the current Chinese first lady, Peng Liyuan