Shanghai Designer Mark Gong’s Million-Dollar Moment

Mark Gong can remember the exact time and date when he found out that Jennie from Blackpink had been photographed in his now-famous dog print T-shirt: “It was February 24, 2025 — 3pm. That was crazy, I was freaking out.”

Anticipating a spike in demand for the cotton tee, which features six dachshunds wearing pearl necklaces, the team called up their supplier and ordered an extra 500 units. By the time the designer had returned from a barbershop appointment that same day, all pre-orders had been filled. “I was like, OK, let’s go big, let’s try 2,000,” he recalls. So, 30,000 dog T-shirt sales later, the 28-year-old designer’s business is buoyant and looking to build on the momentum.

The eponymous label — stylized as Markgong — currently employs around 17 full-time staff and six freelancers, who work across everything from pattern-cutting and embroidery to supply chain management and finance. “If you’re a designer here in China, you’re not just a designer, you’re a business person,” he says. “You have to be a boss.”

Speaking on the eve of his Spring/Summer 2027 show at Shanghai Fashion Week, which will mark the brand’s 10th physical runway moment, the womenswear designer has a busy night ahead — “We’re probably going to be up until 6am.” Still, he manages to squeeze in some time to walk me through his plans for the future.

The Gong Girl effect

Gong, who is 28 and studied at New York’s Parsons School of Design, is part of the emerging cohort of Shanghai-based designers who studied abroad before building serious businesses back home. After graduating, Gong established the brand in New York in 2018, before relocating the business to his native China during the Covid pandemic in 2020.

In August, the designer opened his first flagship store in Shanghai’s IAMP Mall, as well as an online storefront via Alibaba-owned retail platform Tmall. Annual revenue for the business as a whole currently sits around the $1 million mark, according to Gong, with direct-to-consumer making up around 60-70% of sales. (Gong notes that online sales figures are hard to pin down thanks to China’s notoriously high return rates, which can reach up to 70%.) T-shirts alone account for around 35% of the business.

The main impetus for opening the store, which operates in collaboration with renowned brand incubator Labelhood, is to be able to showcase less traditionally commercial items to the customer. With the T-shirts selling well each season, the designer is conscious of creating a space where he can invite his fans — known as the Gong Girls — to immerse themselves in his wider universe. “The strategy for the store is that I really want people to see all the higher-end items and the show pieces,” Gong says.

Now, his pastel puffy dresses and embroidery and sequin-laden pieces have a place to shine — and in the few weeks that the store has been open, they’ve been an unexpected hit. “I was nervous, but it’s going surprisingly well, and people are really liking them,” says Gong. “It’s a place where people can actually go and try them on.”

A winning formula

Gong has been savvy in his strategy for getting his clothes on the right people. As well as the Jennie dog T-shirt moment, Gong also dressed Blackpink’s Lisa in a tuxedo dress for the 2025 Oscars, alongside a growing roster of other Asian A-listers who have worn his designs.

“Using celebrity dressing as one of the sales triggers was always our strategy,” he says. Editorials in magazines “don’t help drive the sales at all”; while what celebrities wear in their day-to-day — in paparazzi photos or in pictures they post themselves on Instagram or Xiaohongshu — can seriously move the needle. Korean celebrities arguably hold the most clout, says Gong, causing waves across Asia and beyond, inspiring people to shop.

To catch the attention of the stars and their stylists, Gong usually begins with stage dressing, providing costumes for their performances — great for brand awareness, but not necessarily for sales — to create trust. “We build up a relationship with them by doing the stage looks, and then we slowly move onto more daily wear,” he says.

For Gong, it’s important for his clothes to be easily understood and related to. “I’ve been to a lot of shows before and read the show notes where [the designer] was inspired by a book or a painting. It just feels really far away from me, and I cannot relate,” he says. “You’ve got 10 minutes to put on a show and how you can make people inspired.”

And so, Gong’s womenswear, which has been inspired by everything from Sex & The City’s Samantha Jones to the designer’s own dating life, is often grounded in reality and irreverence. “And a sense of humor,” he adds. This season’s T-shirts include a tongue-in-cheek definition of the noun ‘limerence’ — a state of romantic fixation — which is also the title of the latest collection. “You barely know him, but you already got the baby name.”

Markgong currently has 60 wholesale stockists in China, and plans to keep that number stable: the brand won’t add more accounts “unless one drops out and then we replace them”. But Gong has his sights set on the West. He recently signed to Purple PR in the US, which is helping with VIP and celebrity dressing, building relationships with stylists, and helping with sales and distribution. “We’re just getting started, so we definitely want to move on to the US market and European market, so that’s our first step,” he says.

To appeal to a more diverse range of Western stores and buyers, Gong has expanded the collection, from around 160 to 260 SKUs. “It’s for our customers, but also for stylists; we want them to be able to see more different angles from Markgong,” he says.

His shows, which are on the more extravagant side in Shanghai, cost around RMB 200,000 ($30,000) — a fraction of what a similar production would cost in Europe, leaving him with more breathing space to invest in developing the brand. And while the designer says he might like to “pop in” to hold a runway show there in the future, he is satisfied with the platform he gets in Shanghai. “Here, people see us. And we can shine.”