Chinese Design Is Booming. What Does That Mean for Western Luxury?

Until recently, China’s importance to the global fashion industry has been largely measured by consumption: its appetite for luxury rather than its ability to produce the next generation of talent.

Now, against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, China’s luxury market is recalibrating, says Fflur Roberts, head of luxury goods at Euromonitor International. “Weaker consumer confidence, slower economic growth and heightened price sensitivity are weighing on discretionary spending, following more than a decade in which China was a key driver of global luxury growth,” she says.

And although China’s personal luxury goods market showed signs of stabilization in 2025, luxury fashion remained under pressure, and according to figures from Euromonitor, is still down considerably from its peak in 2023 (approximately $460 million, versus a projected $407 million for 2027). LVMH earlier this month posted a 5% drop in sales for the third quarter for fashion and leather goods, laying the blame on “less buoyant demand” in China. For global brands to maintain relevance in this environment, Roberts adds, it will require more than longstanding prestige.

“The growing presence of domestic brands is broadening the competitive landscape and offering consumers more diverse alternatives to established international houses,” she says.

At least in Western fashion industry terms, China’s domestic designer market is a mere three decades old, beginning in the 1990s as China aligned with seasonal norms and established its own formalized fashion institutions. It’s now finally maturing, thanks to a recent proliferation of designers, many of whom studied at renowned fashion schools in Europe and America and are now building their businesses back home. This generation of local brands is able to get a foothold in the market because of proximity and access to cost-effective manufacturing infrastructure that emerging brands in Europe and the US don’t have.

“It means an incredible potential to have fashion and style at all price points, at a large consumer level, which cannot exist in other places,” says Blake Abbie, editor-in-chief of A Magazine Curated By, who notes that China’s design industry has seen a recent burst in traction. “The majority of that growth has only happened in the last 15 years,” he says.

So what will the next 15 years look like –– and what will it mean for the global luxury brands that have relied on China for growth?

Asia as fashion’s new nucleus?

The rise of domestic designers in China comes at an exciting time for Asian fashion at large.

International fashion talent is increasingly looking to the wider region for new opportunities: Kim Jones’s new brand will be based in Hong Kong; Kris van Assche partnered with Chinese sportswear giant Anta; Clare Waight Keller and Francesco Risso have taken up top positions at Fast Retailing’s Uniqlo and GU, respectively, in Japan; and former Gucci creative director Sabato De Sarno will present his first collection for Shanghai-based Icicle during Fall/Winter 2027. “It’s no longer a given that [a Western designer] is going to work in a European house,” says Jonathan Lee, a veteran fashion consultant based in Hong Kong. “Maybe someone from Asia will take you.”

It’s not just designers who are seeking opportunities in the region. David Siwicki, the Paris-based PR, has made a concerted effort in recent seasons to spend more time in Asia and has expanded his portfolio to brands including Oude Waag in Shanghai, Kartik Research in New Delhi, and Amomento in Seoul. “Style and culture in Asia has had a huge impact on fashion at large, so getting involved with local brands in these different markets has given us larger insights into the evolving culture and consumer mindset,” he says.

Though Asia’s fashion industry is still relatively young, there is plenty of precedent for successful brands in the region, from Japan’s Comme des Garçons to South Korea’s Wooyoungmi. “Building internationally influential fashion houses alongside these established names will take time,” says Julio Ng, co-founder of brand development consultancy 2034 alongside partner Olivia Chen. “But the ability of Asian companies to attract global creative talent, combined with their manufacturing capabilities and access to consumers, suggests that influence is no longer confined to the traditional centers of fashion.”

This doesn’t mean Western brands won’t continue to thrive in the region. “Rather, it points to a more selective and fragmented market, in which consumers are increasingly scrutinizing what justifies a premium and what constitutes genuine value,” says Roberts. Louis Vuitton, Dior, Loro Piana and Tiffany & Co. have opened new flagship stores in Tier 1 cities and have scaled back their presence in some Tier 2 and 3 locations, while Our Legacy — a newer brand — partnered with local multi-brand retailer Dongliang on an artsy, local-feeling store in Shanghai to get closer to its consumers there. “Chinese consumers are becoming more discerning about how and where they spend, prioritizing quality, individuality and personal relevance over brand recognition alone,” Roberts says.

Mining heritage and guochao

National pride in China, expressed through the guochao movement, continues to boom in fashion, with local designers finding new ways to translate their own culture in their designs. First noted in the late 2010s, it points to a shift in how Chinese designers have shifted away from emulating Western fashion, and are instead finding more contemporary ways to interpret their own heritage. Qipao (oriental floral prints) and Pankou (frog buttons), for instance, are increasingly common sights on the runways at Shanghai Fashion Week.

Pronounce, a Shanghai-based brand that turned 10 this year, put on a show of wearable, lightweight separates and relaxed menswear that designers Yushan Li and Jun Zhou say intended to transcend the boundaries of Eastern dress and gender, “drawing inspiration from Eastern culture without being confined by tradition.” Hemu opened the week with a collection inspired by the Silk Road, featuring Chinese silks refreshed into clothing that was contemporary but unmistakably Eastern in silhouette and sensibility.

Samuel Guí Yang, meanwhile, showed a collection about the myth of the White Snake, an old Chinese legend, says that international consumers are becoming more open to traditionally Chinese aesthetics. “Maybe in the beginning there was a slight hesitation [for cultural appropriation], but I think over time we have identified a certain type of client and some people really are drawn to it,” the designer says. Yang’s partner Erik Litzen adds that the brand’s clients “understand it’s not just about the culture, it’s about the beauty of a garment. If you approach it with respect, it works.”

Euromonitor’s Roberts says that mining their own heritage is a key way that local brands can compete with more global names, because it speaks more directly to the Chinese customer, building a strong foundation at home before eventually using the momentum to build their businesses abroad. “[It means] they can gain relevance by combining innovation with cultural resonance and a deeper understanding of local consumers,” she says.

The tricky second step

The most pressing question is whether this new generation can graduate from small brands into more globally recognized names with greater financial success. “There is a huge talent underground here. It’s only waiting to explode,” says Giovanni Pugnetti, the former CEO of OTB Group Greater China, who’s been based in Shanghai for nine years.

To reach what he calls “the second step”, however, will mean overcoming plenty of obstacles. The executive points to a dearth of high-quality wholesale distribution in China — “no more than 25 high-level shops”, including the ultra-luxury SKP in Beijing and the behemothic B1ock, a buzzy 10-floor department store in Hangzhou — a challenging mall retail landscape, and few viable online channels beyond Taobao and Tmall.

To bypass wholesale challenges, China’s next generation of brands is embracing the direct-to-consumer (DTC) model by opening their own stores. Both Mark Gong (founded in 2018) and Samuel Gui Yang (founded in 2015) have opened their first stores in central Shanghai in recent months, with the help of incubator Labelhood, which has also been behind store openings for brands including Shushu/Tong and Short Sentence.

The shift to their own retail spaces in China represents a maturing of the next-gen designer scene. “Brands are rethinking how they position themselves, reach their audiences and build loyalty, and a store allows them to retain greater control over distribution and develop closer relationships with their customers,” says Chen.

Yang’s experience suggests that the type of sustained investment that a store represents in the local market can pay off. In addition to opening a shop, the brand has been showing off-schedule during Shanghai Fashion Week for the past few seasons. “We’ve built more sales and customer base here, and we’re growing gradually step by step in the market,” says the designer. The brand has 34 stockists in China, compared to four or five in the rest of the world. “I think we give time and love to [the region] here, and then they return the same. That’s why we’re carrying on here.”

When monitoring growth, Chen and Ng are keen to distinguish between revenue potential and profitability. “Significant sales don’t necessarily translate into a healthy business,” says Ng. “The cost of reaching customers, distribution terms, inventory exposure, and the ability to maintain reasonable margins all matter. The question is increasingly not just how much a brand can sell in Asia, but what kind of business it can build here. Does it have a loyal customer base? Can it generate repeat business? Can it operate sustainably without relying on constant expansion?”

Not the new Paris

For designers to build truly global businesses, it’s not enough for them to have brands that are confined to domestic success. Fashion week comes with its own obstacles. The costs of bringing their collections to Paris is increasingly prohibitive for smaller brands, but showing at home is not enough.

Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul have struggled to consistently attract a strong showing of international editors and buyers to their respective fashion weeks. Distance from Europe and the US, language barriers, and rising airfares all play a part. Insiders point to another obstacle: a misalignment in calendars across Asia’s fashion capitals, which can either overlap or show at vastly different times, making a trip to the region for Western professionals less attractive.

“If [they] tried to shift to get their dates closer together, I think it can bring more buyers over,” says Lee. But with political tensions flaring on and off between the countries, it seems unlikely that they will align in the near or medium-term future. “It’s a huge missed opportunity,” says Abbie.

Experts agree that even if Asia will become more globally important in the fashion conversation, framing it as a potential “new Europe” is misguided. “Shanghai doesn’t need to become the new Paris. It needs to become the new Shanghai,” says Pugnetti. “For me, it’s already the center of something, but they need to find their own way to develop the local fashion culture.”

That means building stronger connections between the region’s fashion capitals, but also finding ways for designers to reach more international buyers, press and customers. “Economically, I think the Asian capitals will continue to rise and evolve on the global scene and gain more recognition,” says Siwicki, who adds that his own business is already seeing the benefits from putting more attention on Asia. “De-Westernizing our mindset on fashion has been very enlightening.”