China's fashion revolution: the rise of luxury clothing in the east

Times

09-05-2025

Guochao is probably not a word that trips off your tongue. It translates, roughly, as 'China chic' and is a growing trend in a country whose increasing economic growth can make or break brands from around the world.
The speed of its growth is making international luxury brands if not worried, then alert. Much has been made of the slowing of the Chinese economy. But the acceleration of a sense of cultural potency, and of guochao, is also important — especially when Chinese luxury consumption is estimated to account for 35 to 40 per cent of the global spend by 2030. As Jing Zhang, of the Asian luxury consultant Atlas Altar, observes: 'Western luxury is having to engage with Chinese culture on a deeper level to create an emotional connection with their consumers. It's not enough to throw a dragon onto something any more.'
Yet what remains striking, when I talk to Chinese luxury customers, is the degree to which their sartorial mainstays, the brands with which they fill their wardrobes, are still largely western. Take the two tweed-and-chain-clad women I chatted to at Chanel's recent show in Hangzhou, a city that's a locus for China-centred businesses such as Alibaba. They told me of lives, and wardrobes, that slalomed from London to Houston, Paris to Rome, as well as the primary cities across their homeland. It was tiring — fabulously tiring, admittedly — just hearing about their hardcore travel and shopping schedules, both of which seemed to encompass an awful lot of Chanel. They were a self-selecting pair, of course, given they were at the brand's Métiers d'Art show in the first place. But their international outlook, and wardrobe, is echoed by other wealthy Chinese I meet.
That the French house chose Hangzhou in the first place is symptomatic of the balancing act that western luxury brands must now engage in. The same went for the collection itself, a beauteous riff combining the Rue Cambon and all things Chinese, from bird and blossom-strewn tweeds to fan-pleated silks. 'Imagination is part of creativity,' said Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel's president of fashion. 'We use imagination to keep a connection with our friends in China, at a time when business [there] is a bit more difficult.'
The show served as a reminder that Chinese artisanship was once seen as the quintessence of luxury. Even the specific location was significant: Hangzhou's West Lake is depicted on one of the 19th-century lacquered Coromandel screens Coco Chanel collected.
When luxury brands started to emerge in contemporary China in the 1990s they were all western. Luxury and westernness therefore became synonymous — as did modernity, even when it was the history of brands such as Hermès that was a key part of their appeal. China's illustrious artisanal traditions had been erased in previous decades. The country had lost its past. And it was by way of another culture's past that it felt best able to imagine — and to dress — its future.
As Zhang, who is British-Chinese and has worked on and off in China for years, explains: 'There was this idea that European history and artisanship was acceptable, and that ours wasn't. Or that we didn't even have any. People thought it was passé to reference Chinese heritage in fashion. They just wanted to be modern. It's totally different now. Luxury customers are embracing their own sartorial heritage.'
Zhang sees a split between those in their fifties and above, who 'are influenced by the kind of luxury worship that shaped China in the 1990s', and those who are younger by a couple of decades or more. The wealthy Gen Z women she knows in Shanghai still love their Dior, their Balenciaga, their Loewe, but will mix them up with the tough-edged sexiness of Mark Gong, the luxe streetwear of Feng Chen Wang and the quirky hyperfemininity of Shushu Tong. Another trio of Chinese brands — Ms Min, Uma Wang and Icicle — are hooking older customers as well as younger ones with their gorgeous and occasionally explicitly Chinese-inflected modernism.
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Just as the international houses are having to learn to dance to a slightly different rhythm, so homegrown luxury brands are navigating a market that is split between those who are ready for what they are producing, and those who aren't quite … yet.
'We are just so used to looking to the west,' says Bertrand Mak, whose Hong Kong-based operation Sauvereign produces precious-looking shoes and bags. 'When some Chinese customers find out where we are from they are immediately intrigued, but for others there is a fear of the unknown.'
What makes him cautiously optimistic, he continues, is that 'this is a time when people are seeking out differentiation. That, for us, is the crack that lets the light in.'