LONDON — With the autumn 2023 edition of Shenzhen Fashion Week wrapping up this week, Pan Ming, chair of the Shenzhen Garment Industry Association, organizer of the weeklong showcase, is wanting to share how she is planning to show China’s tech hub right into a fashion capital that may rub shoulders with Beijing and Shanghai within the near future.

While Shenzhen is often called China’s very own Silicon Valley — tech giants Tencent, BYD and DJI have headquarters there — Pan noted that the town can be home to a few of an important women’s fashion labels in China, resembling Marisfrolg, Ellassay, Redstone, EEKA and Vi-ein.

These brands have dominated the shop floors at local malls and shopping malls for years, and a few have expanded their portfolios up to now decade by snatching up international brands to compete within the increasingly saturated market.

Marisfrolg, for instance, bought Kriza in 2014. Ellassay holds the China operation rights to Self-Portrait, Vivienne Tam, Ed Hardy and Laurel, which opened this season’s Shenzhen Fashion Week, while Redstone owns Giada, Curiel, Gabriele Colangelo and Yi, a Chinese contemporary label.

“That [puts] us in a really different position from Beijing or Shanghai. All of the award-winning designers go to Beijing’s China Fashion Week, and the offering could be very diverse. Shanghai is home to chill emerging designers. Here in Shenzhen, now we have so many powerful and influential brands here to debut their latest collections,” explained Pan.

Pan also identified the undeniable fact that Shenzhen is at the guts of China’s Greater Bay Area, a regional concept first mentioned in China’s thirteenth Five-12 months Plan in 2016, which incorporates Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong as the first growth nodes but additionally Dongguan, Foshan, Zhongshan, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Zhuhai, Zhaoqing and Macau. Each city is connected by highway and high-speed rail, and a dozen inter-city metro lines and multiple bridges are under construction to supply much more connectivity.

“We’re in a position to profit greatly from the synergy between different cities. Fashion corporations can do the creative development in Shenzhen, and have items manufactured elsewhere throughout the Greater Bay Area seamlessly with cloud solutions. We’re also willing to explore deeper partnerships with fashion organizations in Hong Kong. There may be a lot we are able to do together,” she said.

Shenzhen as a city is built along the border it shares with Hong Kong, expanding from east to west. Its fashion industry is concentrated in three areas, in accordance with Pan.

Nanshan is where emerging designer brands arrange their studios, Futian is where most major local fashion corporations began are are headquartered and Longhua is one other emerging hub for fashion brands (the local government has issued favorable policies to draw key tenants).

“Shenzhen is each suitable for entrepreneurship and employment. We’ve 2,500 brands which might be consistently searching for talented employees for employment. If you desire to start a business, we even have one in every of the world’s largest clusters of fashion designers. You’ll have the ability to fill the positions very quickly,” Pan touted.

Since becoming the chairwoman of the Shenzhen Garment Industry Association in late 2019, Pan has made drastic changes to make Shenzhen Fashion Week more attractive and relevant to the worldwide fashion conversation.

“We’re relatively young to the senses. For the primary five years, from 2015 to 2020, we only host[ed] one showcase per 12 months within the spring. Then got here the pandemic, we experimented with different latest ideas, resembling livestreaming and [the] metaverse, and we never stopped showing. It’s secure to say that we built a solid foundation during COVID-19, and we at the moment are able to use what now we have to interact with the remainder of the world,” Pan said.

For Pan, technology, sustainability and talent are on top of mind when pushing Shenzhen Fashion Week forward.

With Shenzhen Public Notaries, Pan developed technology that protects the mental property rights of all of the designs showcased on the runway concurrently. Chinese authorities have strengthened their commitment to mental property protection in recent times.

Last season, Shenzhen also hosted what was touted to be the world’s carbon-neutral fashion show. And with more partnerships signed with key players in the sector of sustainable fashion, Pan hopes that Shenzhen Fashion Week can go green every season.

When it comes to attracting talent, Pan said she hopes to form an equal and interesting dialogue with international designers. This season, she invited Matty Bovan, Harri, Chet Lo, Edward Crutchley, Dhruv Kapoor, Di Petsa, (Di)vision, Ancuta Sarca, Susan Fang, Celine Kwan, Karmuel Young and Louis Shengtao Chenwill to showcase with CMYK Lab.

“We’ve been doing a project on the revitalization of traditional heritage. We showcased a part of the outcomes with local designers this season. In the longer term, we hope to ask these international designers to are available and compete with one another and see who can higher reinterpret traditional heritage. To me, this might be a more meaningful option to engage with the worldwide fashion industry,” Pan added.

This season, over 300 brands participated in Shenzhen Fashion Week, 14 of that are international. Some 30,000 people visited fashion week’s official showroom Showboom and CMYK Lab.

Pan anticipated that for the subsequent edition of Shenzhen fashion week in the autumn, the showroom business will grow to be greater and more targeted. Even when the town’s major fashion players sell on their very own cycles, smaller brands can still profit from the in-town crowd during fashion week.

“Buyers are very willing to come back here because Shenzhen brands arguably have the perfect supply chain on this planet. Brands will be very flexible with orders. We’re aware that many stores are still recovering from the pandemic. I even have told our brands that we must be more accommodating to their needs and concerns and supply the perfect service we are able to,” Pan said.