China's Tech Hub Shenzhen Wants to Become a Fashion Capital – WWD

LONDON — With the fall 2023 edition of Shenzhen Fashion Week wrapping up this week, Pan Ming, chair of the Shenzhen Garment Industry Association, organizer of the weeklong showcase, is eager to share how she is planning to turn China’s tech hub into a fashion capital that can rub shoulders with Beijing and Shanghai in the near future.

While Shenzhen is known as China’s very own Silicon Valley — tech giants Tencent, BYD and DJI have headquarters there — Pan noted that the city is also home to some of the most important women’s fashion labels in China, such as Marisfrolg, Ellassay, Redstone, EEKA and Vi-ein.

These brands have dominated the shop floors at local department stores and shopping malls for years, and some have expanded their portfolios in the past decade by snatching up international brands to compete in the increasingly saturated market.

Marisfrolg, for example, bought Kriza in 2014. Ellassay holds the China operation rights to Self-Portrait, Vivienne Tam, Ed Hardy and Laurel, which opened this season’s Shenzhen Fashion Week, while Redstone owns Giada, Curiel, Gabriele Colangelo and Yi, a Chinese contemporary label.

“That [puts] us in a very different position from Beijing or Shanghai. All the award-winning designers go to Beijing’s China Fashion Week, and the offering is very diverse. Shanghai is home to cool emerging designers. Here in Shenzhen, we have so many powerful and influential brands here to debut their new collections,” explained Pan.

Pan also pointed out the fact that Shenzhen is at the heart of China’s Greater Bay Area, a regional concept first mentioned in China’s 13th Five-Year Plan in 2016, which includes Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong as the primary growth nodes but also Dongguan, Foshan, Zhongshan, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Zhuhai, Zhaoqing and Macau. Each city is connected by highway and high-speed rail, and a dozen inter-city metro lines and multiple bridges are under construction to provide even more connectivity.

“We are able to benefit greatly from the synergy between different cities. Fashion companies can do the creative development in Shenzhen, and have items manufactured elsewhere within the Greater Bay Area seamlessly with cloud solutions. We are also willing to explore deeper partnerships with fashion organizations in Hong Kong. There is so much we can do together,” she said.

Shenzhen as a city is built along the border it shares with Hong Kong, expanding from east to west. Its fashion industry is concentrated in three areas, according to Pan.

Nanshan is where emerging designer brands set up their studios, Futian is where most major local fashion companies started are are headquartered and Longhua is another emerging hub for fashion brands (the local government has issued favorable policies to attract key tenants).

“Shenzhen is both suitable for entrepreneurship and employment. We have 2,500 brands that are constantly looking for talented workers for employment. If you want to start a business, we also have one of the world’s largest clusters of fashion designers. You will be able to fill the positions in no time,” Pan touted.

Since becoming the chairwoman of the Shenzhen Garment Industry Association in late 2019, Pan has made drastic changes to make Shenzhen Fashion Week more attractive and relevant to the global fashion conversation.

“We are relatively young to the senses. For the first five years, from 2015 to 2020, we only host[ed] one showcase per year in the spring. Then came the pandemic, we experimented with different new ideas, such as livestreaming and [the] metaverse, and we never stopped showing. It’s safe to say that we built a solid foundation during COVID-19, and we are now ready to use what we have to engage with the rest of the world,” Pan said.

For Pan, technology, sustainability and talent are on top of mind when pushing Shenzhen Fashion Week forward.

With Shenzhen Public Notaries, Pan developed technology that protects the intellectual property rights of all the designs showcased on the runway simultaneously. Chinese authorities have strengthened their commitment to intellectual property protection in recent years.

Last season, Shenzhen also hosted what was touted to be the world’s carbon-neutral fashion show. And with more partnerships signed with key players in the field of sustainable fashion, Pan hopes that Shenzhen Fashion Week can go green every season.

In terms of attracting talent, Pan said she hopes to form an equal and engaging dialogue with international designers. This season, she invited Matty Bovan, Harri, Chet Lo, Edward Crutchley, Dhruv Kapoor, Di Petsa, (Di)vision, Ancuta Sarca, Susan Fang, Celine Kwan, Karmuel Young and Louis Shengtao Chenwill to showcase with CMYK Lab.

“We have been doing a project on the revitalization of traditional heritage. We showcased part of the results with local designers this season. In the future, we hope to invite these international designers to come in and compete with each other and see who can better reinterpret traditional heritage. To me, this would be a more meaningful way to engage with the global fashion industry,” Pan added.

This season, over 300 brands participated in Shenzhen Fashion Week, 14 of which are international. Some 30,000 people visited fashion week’s official showroom Showboom and CMYK Lab.

Pan anticipated that for the next edition of Shenzhen fashion week in the fall, the showroom business will become bigger and more targeted. Even if the city’s major fashion players sell on their own cycles, smaller brands can still benefit from the in-town crowd during fashion week.

“Buyers are very willing to come here because Shenzhen brands arguably have the best supply chain in the world. Brands can be very flexible with orders. We are aware that many stores are still recovering from the pandemic. I have told our brands that we need to be more accommodating to their needs and concerns and provide the best service we can,” Pan said.