From March to April, from the international stage to the Chinese domestic market, from runway shows to trade fairs, fashion weeks have turn into major events worldwide. With China International Fashion Week, Shanghai Fashion Week, Shenzhen Fashion Week, Xiamen International Fashion Week and a series of fashion weeks in lower-tier cities happening all around the country, what does this mean for the state of the style industry in China.

In 2014, Xiamen was known as “the Antwerp in China” in a Latest York Times report, which marked the coastal city’s journey toward gaining the eye of the style world. The next 12 months, Xiamen International Fashion Week was launched, and it has been held for eight years with the support of the local government. Since 2022, Xiamen Fashion Week has launched a multipoint interconnection model of “industry-city integration” involving the entire city’s cultural landmarks. Starting this 12 months, it can be held twice a 12 months, according to international schedules.

Fashion events like Xiamen International Fashion Week, which link industry executives and in addition try to interact consumers, have been popular lately throughout China.

This mainly might be attributed to the success of Shanghai Fashion Week, which has attracted global attention. However, events like Shenzhen Fashion Week have the flexibility to serve the event of the industry. At the identical time, it serves as a “fashion business card for the town”; has a residual impact on the town following the tip of the style week, and helps drive the expansion of the commercial economy.

In consequence, an increasing variety of major events are being organized within the name of fashion throughout China, with quite a few cities hoping to turn into fashion consumption hubs.

Innovation Through Competition: How Can Fashion Weeks Take the Lead?

The history of fashion weeks in China might be traced to the last century. In 1997, China International Fashion Week was held for the primary time by the China Fashion Designers Association.

Upon its establishment, the national fashion week attracted attention by giving awards akin to the Golden Top Award, the Top 10 Designers Award and the Top 10 Skilled Fashion Models. The week also served as the key promoter of the event of China’s fashion industry.

4 years later, the birth of Shanghai Fashion Week showed that fashion weeks didn’t only occur in Beijing. Shanghai Fashion Week had a breakthrough in 2020, when the worldwide fashion industry pressed the pause button because of COVID-19, ushering in the primary online fashion week. Taking “fashion is rarely offline, see you on the ‘Cloud’” as its slogan, the move helped raise the profile of Shanghai Fashion Week and placed it among the many global industry’s leading events.

Following within the steps of Beijing and Shanghai, Shenzhen, home of major fashion producers, began its fashion week in 2014. As a latecomer, what could Shenzhen offer? Being home to leading industry players may be the reply. Pan Ming, president of the Shenzhen Garment Industry Association, said in an interview: “A very powerful feature of Shenzhen Fashion Week is technology empowerment and going green.”

As the top of the organizer, she focuses on technological innovation and brand digital transformation and upgrading, the incubation and promotion of young designers, and the international integration and diversification of the style week.

Along with other development strategies, each Shenzhen and Xiamen fashion weeks this 12 months emphasized the concept of “linked development.”

In keeping with Shenzhen Fashion Week, under the guidance of the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Commerce, this 12 months’s event linked 60 major shopping malls in Shenzhen and 1000’s of brands to create a “Fashion Carnival of Shenzhen Fashion Week.” These activities held throughout the town provided a possibility for most people to interact with fashion and art culture, with the aim of generating fashion sales.

Xiamen, home to many local leading sports brands, focuses on sports and fashion with the concept of a fashion carnival, which links recent China-made products with recent retail models. It also has created the primary domestic four-dimensional integrated service fashion platform that might be viewed, experienced, discussed and consumed.

The operator of the Xiamen Jianfa Xingguang Fashion Cultural Creation Co. Ltd. revealed in an interview that with a view to goal mainstream, post-’90s and Gen Z consumers, the concept of “cultural landmark integration” is implemented all year long. Emerging sports akin to table tennis, Frisbee, skateboarding, street basketball and street dancing will proceed to be promoted after the tip of the style week to take care of the interest of Gen Z.

“Consumption boost” are the important thing words for the Chinese market in 2023, and fashion week organizers and participating firms are joining the push to generate increased fashion sales.

Industry-City Integration: The Fashion Industry Chain Behind Fashion Week

the big fashion events in China in the course of the first quarter, there’s a transparent trend in 2023: coastal cities are gaining in popularity within the context of the worldwide economy.

Along with Shenzhen Fashion Week and Xiamen International Fashion Week, Hainan, the hosting city of the “Haitian Feast” — a high-end lifestyle exhibition with makers of business jets and yachts because the major exhibitors — welcomed Michael Kors’ first Jet Set tour in China in March, followed by Louis Vuitton’s first Hainan store in Haikou MixC.

Behind every coastal city that hosts fashion weeks or major fashion-themed events, there’s a powerful industry chain laid out.

Taking Shenzhen for instance, with the town’s status of “being the pacesetter for girls’s fashion in China,” it isn’t only home to leading firms akin to Ellassay and Eeka Fashion, but additionally has large and small trade fairs like Chic and Intertextile all year long. Ordering isn’t limited to transactions during fashion week, but happens one year and in multiple showrooms, making the town a preferred destiny for Chinese buyers.

Xiamen is thought for its sports industry cluster. The style week held there naturally attracts domestic leading sports fashion brands akin to Anta, Li Ning, Xtep, 361°, Peak and Particle Fever. At the identical time, there are recent luxury women’s brands akin to Jorya, Uooyaa, Mukzin, MSlan, JWB, Fengfei-Z, Mashama, Wanyifang and Chnnyu, and other recent Chinese power brands.

Compared with Shenzhen’s all-year-round ordering fairs, Xiamen adopts the concept of “the town is the runway” to integrate the event into the rhythm of urban development by combining “fashion shows” with the “cultural tourism landscape in the town.”

Along with the participation of top brands, original designers are an important a part of fashion weeks and are sometimes set as a long-term strategy. So Xiamen also works with Ji Wenbo, Zeng Fengfei, Masha MA, Wan Yifang, Chen Yu, Ye Qian, Zheng Qing’er and other domestic designers,

In keeping with the organizers, 60 percent of the schedule of this 12 months’s Shenzhen Fashion Week, which opened Wednesday, features designer brands. The organizing committee established the AND Showroom, which collects independent designers within the Bay Area, and the ShowBoom Showroom, an expert order meeting for top designer brands from home and abroad, to ask greater than 1,000 global buyers. As well as, it has created an order meeting along side the Nanshan Designer Cluster to cultivate local designers and enhance the industry’s voice, power and attractiveness by way of universal, shared and customary applications.

Editor’s note: China Insight is a monthly column by editors from WWD’s sister publication WWD China taking a look at key trends and developments in that essential market.