Pride of China

A new breed of young designers is breaking the molds and making their own rules in design and fashion. Chen Nan turns on the spotlight on some exceptional examples.

High rent, predatory competitors and a relatively uninformed consumer crowd would discourage most tender new entrants to the fashion business. Not so for a handful of new Chinese designers, who are upending conventional notions of Chinese design, making rapid commercial success and turning from unknown to renowned in a short time.

Wang Yiyang, a 35-year-old Shanghai-based designer, is one of them.