Shanghai Fashion Week: How ambitious brands and boutiques defy sluggish business

The catwalks and showrooms at Shanghai Fashion Week impressed with variety and quality in the AW25 season, especially among the younger labels. The country's budding fashion scene is profiting from the local manufacturing expertise and has evolved rapidly over the past decade, despite a tough apparel market that is showing some signs of recovery.

How a brand is born

A maze of mirrors and scattered newspapers on the floor set the scene at the show of Shanghai-based label Mark Gong. A sharply tailored blazer ensemble, with deep neckline and flower sequins, or a velvet cape dress with ultralong fringes paint a glamourous, lavish and seductive image of fashion. But the designer, who founded his label in 2018 after graduating from Parsons New York, doesn’t stop here.

Exalted details – such as oversized furry stoles, a T-shirt declaring “I love Mark Gong, Money & Boys” paired with a short leopard mini-skirt and models carrying fake Oscars as accessories – play with the notions of luxury and fashion, the image and insignia of fame.

The show demonstrates vividly how a brand is born by adding layers of associations – wry comments on dress and fame in this case – to elevate garments into fashion. Labels at Shanghai Fashion Week have become proficient in this exercise as China’s apparel manufacturing expertise merges with appealing design and brand image.

A visit to Labelhood underlines this impression. The multifaceted incubator hosts shows – such as the one by Mark Gong – and the Lab showroom during Shanghai Fashion Week at Rockbund, a cultural space in the former European concession lined with cafés, boutiques and galleries. Labelhood also operates its own stores which stock the Chinese designers it supports. This allows the talents to test their collections on the market and to receive first-hand feedback to work into their collections.

Hungry talent

With a good eye for talent and branding, Labelhood has become a defining force in creating a poster-child cool image for Chinese fashion - at home and abroad. Many Chinese labels such as Susan Fang, Shushu/Tong or Didu first presented at their showcase in Shanghai before gaining recognition on an international fashion stage. And the next generation is already waiting their turn in the Labelhood showroom.

The Hong Kong-based designer Kinyan Lam, first specialised in traditional natural dyeing and embroidery before launching a fashion collection at the advice of Labelhood’s co-founder Tasha Liu. After seeing her graduate collection, she also asked Joyce Bao, a graduate of London’s Central Saint Martins, to join the showroom with her ethereal designs. Yayi Chenzhou, was listed as a semifinalist for last year’s LVMH-Prize for her work exploring women’s identities drawing from her own upbringing between Spain and China.

Among the emerging labels at Labelhood, the share of designers, who either grew up abroad or studied at prestigious fashion schools outside of China is noticeable. “Returning to China with an overseas background certainly holds advantages,” Zikun Zhu said at the Lab showroom.

After finishing his masters in Fashion Design at Parsons Paris and stints at fashion label Botter in Antwerp and design agency No More Mondays, he landed his current position as womenswear designer at the trendy Chinese label Liègee last year – a step that might have taken him much longer in Europe.

In comparison, he also sees the proximity to China’s garment sector as an advantage, saving time and resources in creating a collection. “You have an international perspective, you know how to access first-hand information and research, while being able to tap into a mature supply chain,” Zhu explained.

Commercial realities

Labelhood, albeit among the most visible, is only a part of Shanghai Fashion Week which counted almost 100 fashion shows and more than 20 showrooms during the AW25 season. Bigger and more commercial brands tend to show at Xintiandi, an affluent shopping district with traditional brick houses. An example is EP Yaying, a traditional luxury womenswear brand founded in 1988, that opened Shanghai Fashion Week this season. Others are Goldlion 3388, a subline of a Hong Kong-based menswear conglomerate founded in 1968. While brands such as Moncler or Vivienne Westwood used the same stage to reach a Chinese audience in the past, this season bigger international luxury names were notably missing from the show schedule.

The venue also still sees catwalks by independent designer labels such as Xu Zhi or Short Sentence, who are celebrating their tenth anniversary as a brand this year. The show doesn’t stop there for the labels as buyers from all over China fly to Shanghai to screen and order collections. For the autumn/winter 2025 season, trade shows and showrooms presented 900 brands, according to the organisers of Shanghai Fashion Week.

”Many trade shows have reported a 10 to 20 percent rise in visitors, while the willingness to place orders is also increasing,” they said in a statement. The slight improvement in sentiment echoes the latest figures by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, according to which retail sales in January and February have grown by 4 percent compared to the same period last year.

At Mode, the biggest trade show and a fair held by the organisers of Shanghai Fashion Week, the number of international exhibitors recovered to more than 200 from 34 countries to reach pre-pandemic levels. Brands notably didn’t only join from Europe and North-America but also from South East Asia, Japan and Korea.

Points of entry

In the past, Korean hat designer Shinjeo Park thought that Chinese consumers preferred a rather dressed-up style with plenty of ornaments but that isn’t true anymore.

“The taste of the consumers has become more aligned with global trends. My bestsellers in Korea are the same as in China,” she said at Room Room, a showroom operated by tradeshow Ontimeshow at Westbund, a riverside cultural hub lined with sleek and angular architecture. Her straw hats are classic, with black accents like bows or transparent stripes, exuding a timeless elegance.

The popularity of Korean pop culture is still providing a boost to Korean brands in China, with fans seeking out certain brands or styles that idols wear. Park's designs, retailing between 900 to 1,700 yuan (113 to 210 US dollars), became famous at home after appearing in Korean dramas, which also helped her business grow in China over the past years.

Yet, she further notes that without a unique selling point such as being featured in a popular Korean series, it has become harder to gain a foothold in China’s market as a foreign brand.

“China’s fashion market is growing mature rapidly,” said Park. “Five to six years ago, Korean fashion was very popular in China, but nowadays they’re facing increasingly stiff competition from Chinese brands.”

Vital link

The neighbouring brands at the showroom are good examples for what is emerging: Didu, a Chinese label founded in 2019 by its namesake designer after graduating in fashion from the renowned Academy in Antwerp, Belgium, is a regular at Paris Fashion Week. Cremaish is an accessory label set up by a graduate of Parsons New York and now venturing into apparel at the advice of Room Room. The showroom, which is part of Ontimeshow, helps brands to expand their wholesale channel in China, but also with marketing, supply chain, financial or legal advice amongst others.

Over the past decade showrooms have helped to professionalise fashion wholesale, linking emerging brands and designers to buyers from multibrand stores. Before, fashion retail in China used to be dominated by monobrand and department stores.

Notshowroom, Cool Hunter Showroom, Blooming,... the list of showrooms at Shanghai Fashion Week is long and each has their speciality. Tubeshowroom features many rising Chinese designer brands such as Shushu/Tong, Ao Yes or aforementioned Mark Gong. One of Room Rooms' advantages is that it taps into the vast buyer network of its mother organisation Ontimeshow, one of the biggest trade shows at Shanghai Fashion Week.

The fair is also located at Westbund and records an average of 8,000 buyers per season, mainly from China but also from countries such as Thailand, South-Korea, Japan, Vietnam or France. There were buyers from department store Galeries Lafayette China, Chinese multi-brand retailer SND, concept store ENG or Dover Street Market UK, according to the fair organizers.

For the AW25 season, the fair is noting a 30 percent visitor increase compared to the last summer edition with the average number for the first three days back to pre-covid levels.

Full circle

Some brands and designers, who can afford it, also chose their own locations to host shows and order events. Such as Nen Mao from the Chinese city of Guangzhou, founder and CEO of brands Maomart Homme and Mao by Mao.

The location of the show is nestled in a backyard, behind restaurants and boutiques at the scenic and historic Wukang Road in Shanghai. Buyers from all over China, some of them retail partners of more than five years, all clad in the dress code black and white, came together to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the brand. The collection for AW25 balances tailoring as in velvet blazers or heavy wool trousers with flowing skirts. All looks, some inspired by Chinese traditions, are in neutral colours, quiet, yet powerful.

“Ten years ago, I had the simple idea to create a small label, with just three people and two racks of clothes,” said Mao Nen, who founded her first brand Maomart Homme in 2015, after the show. Her company has since launched two other brands, grown to a revenue of 100 million yuan (13.8 million dollars) and more than 60 employees – not including the ones working in their own stores and factory.

The steady success of lowkey founder Mao Nen is somewhat exemplary of the boom of independent Chinese designer labels in the years before the pandemic. ”It feels like a growth journey of an independent Chinese designer which has come full circle,” said Mao.

She attended her first fashion fair in Shenzhen, China, as a visitor. After founding her label in 2015, she joined tradeshow Chic and Shitang Showroom in Shanghai, before hosting her current private order events. When she started out ten years ago, independent designer labels were still rare, instead commercial brands lined up the fairgrounds.

That was also the time when sales agents and franchisees would start to explore the possibilities of multibrand stores. The demand for designer labels was there, with Mao calling her timing “serendipity”. “The phase before the pandemic were the golden years for multibrand retailers, when many new stores opened,” said Mao. She recalled buying events, when it felt like swarms and swarms of people wanted to connect with her account on Wechat, a Chinese social media platform, used in daily and business settings.

Evolving retail

The pandemic and years of lockdown have turned the tables of fashion retail in China. E-Commerce has grown to account for half of China’s 620 billion dollar apparel market and is set to grow further, according to estimates by China’s National Garment Association. Facing sluggish consumer demand, many multibrand stores need to redefine themselves and work out what defines them as physical retailers.

Buyer Genie Qiu, a regular at Shanghai Fashion Week and founder of concept space Innerco from Chengdu, China, has witnessed the transformation as an industry veteran. She ran franchises of brands such as Lee, Guess and Timberland before having her own multibrand store for three years, stocking brands such as Margiela or Rick Owens.

“The high end is very hard to run in China,” Qiu said in an interview at the beginning of March at the fair, Chic Shanghai. Now she runs a 7,000-square metre retail space specialising in local Chinese fashion labels such as AFGK or 1807, while also carrying a few international brands such as Raf Simons, Salomon or Rains. It’s a concept catering to 20 to 25 year olds, with average prices at 500 yuan, which is also only available as a physical experience, with pop-ups and local cultural events.

“Online business is more complex, they don’t care about quality, they mainly care about price,” Qiu said. “The current market is difficult and might worsen this year, along with the overall economy.”

That is why she is also working closely with the landlord as a partner, which allows for lower rent. The brands at her space change fast–30 percent of them within a year. “That is why I am also interested in overseas brands, now I want to find more affordable brands for more young customers,” Qiu said. This year she plans to open two more spaces in Shanghai and Shenzhen, and is also talking to local manufacturers to produce her own label and bring it into her stores.

Price pressure

How closely buyers follow events at Shanghai Fashion Week also depends on their clientele.

“Many people were attracted to our store because of products from abroad that they couldn’t buy during the pandemic because of the lockdown, that’s how our clientele was formed,” Joyee Zhu, buyer at the innovative retail concept Shichang in Shanghai said in an interview. She and her colleagues mainly go to Paris to discover brands, and she also noted that consumers are paying more attention to prices.

“In the past two years, we would adjust our buying strategy to slightly lower prices per article,” said Zhu, who was running a pop-up promoting independent labels during Shanghai Fashion Week, also in collaboration with the Hongkong Trade and Development Council.

Shichang stocks higher-priced accessories but they must be from very well-known brands and their designs have to be appealing on social media. For customers, the most attractive price point per article is currently under 1,000 yuan (138 dollars), akin to that of silver jewellery from Greece or T-shirts from a French brand, which attract LGBTQ customers.

Demands of the times

Many designer labels in the showrooms have understood the demands of the markets and have added lower-priced items to their collections or are selling at lower retail prices in China compared to overseas markets.

Hong Kong-based designer Max Tsang has set his minimum order quantity at 5,000 yuan. This is intended to make it easier for retailers to order and test his collection for their stores. He presented his futuristic designs made of functional fabrics, which cost between 400 and 1,500 yuan), in the Young Talents Space of the Ontimeshowroom. Currently, 23 stores carry his label Ip. Axis Industrial, including Poizon in Shanghai and Awgust in Sydney.

Last year, Mao Nen also started to expand outside of China with her second label Mao by Mao, gaining 30 stockists after presenting in showrooms in Milan, Paris and Tokyo. In China, her labels are available at around 200 points of sale.

Despite the unpredictable market, she remains optimistic about the future, as she is confident in the quality and the design of garments she developed over the years. Operating an own factory also allows her control over quality and delivery times.

“The market in China is currently very competitive. Many multibrand stores aren’t doing that well, yet many are still entering what they consider a promising market, but some will surely have to close down, including designer labels and boutiques,” said Mao. “The remaining ones are the ones that are really doing things.”