Fashion In China

When bilingual Chinese-American designer Alexander Wang was appointed as the head of Balenciaga in 2012, fashion insiders felt it signaled a sea change in the way the industry views China. No longer just a cheap workforce sewing clothes for the world, China is now considered the fastest-growing market for luxury and fashion goods. Wang himself had developed three stores for his own namesake line in China before being tagged for the Balenciaga top spot. While executives at the European fashion house insisted Wang’s success in China and language skills were “not criteria” for
his recruitment, they did say his heritage was “an extra value.”


       Chinese spending on fashion and luxury goods is expected to surpass that of the current top markets of the United States and Japan by 2020, according to the Harvard Business Review. Designers and luxury brands have courted Chinese consumers at home and abroad, with everyone from Prada to Chanel to Diane von Furstenberg setting up boutiques in China and making sure
their flagship stores in the West have Mandarin-speaking clerks for the waves of mainland tourists who flock there. Some brands, like Estée Lauder, have created new lines just for the Chinese market. And others like Adidas have learned to tweak their products to capture Chinese fashionistas’ imagination. For example, Adidas offered a $3,100 fur-trimmed leather trench coat as well as high-heeled tennis shoes in addition to its more typical sneakers and sweatshirts to capture more than 11
percent of China’s $23.8 billion sportswear market (behind industry leader Nike, which held just over 12 percent of the market in 2012).

   
        China’s fashion tastes run from foreign luxury brands to downright quirky. While Chinese supermodels are the newest faces on the world’s runways, China’s unlikely top model was a seventy-two-year-old grandfather. The five-foot-eight-inch-tall, 110-pound former rice farmer from central Hunan Province became an Internet sensation in 2012 after he modeled some of the women’s fashions for his granddaughter’s online clothing store. Liu Qianping donned wigs, sunglasses, miniskirts, and colored tights for his gig as a fashion plate, which resonated with China’s netizens. Mr. Liu found himself fielding offers from newspapers and even television talent shows in China as a symbol of the country’s new prosperity and opportunities for personal happiness. “There’s no comparison with the way things are now,” Mr. Liu told reporters when asked to reflect upon the changes he’d witnessed over the course of his life. “Life now is so rich.”