Nancy's essay

How far is China from emerging as a fashion center?

Although many people in the fashion world consider China as a retail market only, some Chinese designers are striving to shine in the international fashion community. It will depend on multiple successful factors so that the country will become a fashion centre internationally. Fashion product is a special kind of product which would be worthless without a brand. China is a beginner in setting up international fashion brands, but we develop quickly. Many designers in China have strong ability of creativity. China also owns a large market of consumption. This essay is going to look further into these three main factors, fashion brand, designers and designer ideas, consumption idea.

The first factor is fashion brand. Famous international brands are vital for China to be a fashion centre. Most people may think that luxurious brands are the representative of materialism, as they're expensive and the effect of pleasure and showing off outweighs their practicability. However, it's just the surface of the things. Connotation and source of luxurious brands are actually spiritual and cultural. Many famous international brands tell people the legend behind their brands such as centuries-old cultural continuity. Further more, luxurious brands always have strong characteristic of national culture. For instance, France stands for romantic, Switzerland stands for accuracy, Italy stands for passion.

So, what does China stand for to the world? Chinese ancient civilization is highly thought of by the world. Silk, teas and porcelain kept coming into the West and Middle East, and was very popular among the high-society people because of the strong sense of Chinese culture. We are not lack of culture. With the development of Chinese economy and the rising nation status, demand for Chinese cultural products of the consumers around the world is becoming higher and higher. That's clearly a chance for Chinese international brands to grow up. Mario Boselli, chairman of Italy Fashion Association, thinks that in the long run, China has the best plus materials, excellent wool and a large amount of raw materials, and in the past twenty years, Chinese enterprises have made a lot of progress (Zhang, 2008). Not long ago, the Chinese brand NE Tiger set up business of high-level costume in Hong Kong. Though this tiger was only 16 years old, it shouted out a slogan of “to be the first luxury brand in China” bravely.

The second factor is designers and design ideas. A fashion centre needs a collection of international masters and indigenous designers. There used to be a lack of world-top designers in China, but now there are a number of excellent designers in Hong Kong and in Mainland China. One of mainland leading designers is Coco Ma. When she first appeared in Paris Fashion Week with her own brand Wu Yong in 2007, her designs created a sensation among the oversea fashion world. Like another famous Hong Kong designer Walter Ma said, Chinese designers are at the stage of learning. He also shows confidence to mainland designers (Lee, 2009).

Design ideas are also important. Fashion isn't necessarily style and style isn't necessarily a price tag. It should introduce new ideas about our culture. Chinese traditional culture with a long history is unique. Cheongsam is a successful example. Many Chinese film stars prefer to wear cheongsam in some important award ceremonies and are well reputed. On Shanghai APEC summit conference in 2001, twenty national leaders wearing Tang suit also caused a global run on Tang suit. Besides, oriental culture can be combined with western culture, for example, absorbing international cultures from fashion cities like Paris, Milan, London and New York.

The third factor is consumption ideas. Why do canvas bags, colorful and plastic costume accessories and purified cotton products become more and more popular in China in recent years? When people realize that human's expanded desire has brought a lot of harm to our environment, people begin to pursuit more healthy and more natural lifestyles, then vegetarian food and cotton costume emerge, so do environmental-friendly bags and costume. When economic crisis happens, fund shortage and insecurity make people transfer to concentrate on those bright-colored products with low costs. These are marks given by times. China owns a large market of consumption. Integrating with the world, Chinese people have gradually opened their mind to a wide range. So long as we follow their ideas about consumption, we get closer to the international fashion centre.

Although China satisfies the requirements on market size and productive power and other particularities, there is still some anxiety for the country to become a world fashion centre. One of these exists in people's mind, not only the designers, but also the public, even the government and companies. For designers, self-expression of Chinese designers is limited by several reasons such as traditional characteristics, economic pressure, demands of marketed. For public, the atmosphere in most cities in China except Hong Kong is not so open (Skov, 2003). Like Coco Ma speaks of how she talked to a kitten in Hong Kong, she talked to it and it approached her. In some other cities of China, they run away. In a society, if people are friendly and accept everything, including ideas, their attitudes will be reflected in even the little animals (Bullis, 2000).Besides, maybe the essence of design is not so difficult to handle. It is the business part that is hard. The talent of Chinese designers is good, but they need more government support, as well as business.

Fortunately, with the influence of globalization, fashion trend of the world are gradually adient. Many international fashion brands have come into Chinese market, and at the same time, a large amount of fashion information is being brought by internet and magazines, which imperceptibly influences people's mind. The exposure rate of Chinese designers on the world fashion stage is getting higher. Some new rules will come into existence to develop fashion industry in some big cities in China, such as Shanghai and Beijing. Chinese designers will be able to use these advantages to exert more influences on international fashion world.

As a conclusion, though we still need time to overwhelm many difficulties and work hard on developing international fashion brands of our own and fashion designs, what we've done has made it closer to the world fashion centre. Being supported by 5000-year culture and a group of people tenaciously pursuing and moving forward, China will give the world a miracle in the future.

Ling ZHENG (Nancy)

Bibliography

Douglas B. (2000). ‘Riddle in a Mystery in an Enigma’, Fashion Asia, Thames & Hudson, p191.

Kailuo L. (9 Sep 2009). ‘zhong guo li shi shang zhong xin hai you duo yuan?’,

http://pop.zoshow.com/east/2110.html

Sandra N, Ann Marie L,Carla J and Lisa S.(2003). ‘Making the Familiar Strange in Hong Kong’,Re-orienting Fashion-the globalization of Asian dress, Berg.

Shengyang Z. (5 May 2008). ‘Zhong guo she chi pin pai ru he lian cheng?’, Xinmin Weekly,

http://www.chinavalue.net/media/Article.aspx?ArticleId=25217&PageId=2