Soft Power, Hard Work

New York Fashion Week can be make-or-break for aspiring Chinese designers, and as most find out, it's all about the buyers, and an eye for international style, as Hezi Jiang reports from New York.

It was 3:40 pm, 20 minutes and counting till the Fashion Hong Kong show. Assistants once again made sure the outfits are nice and neat, hairdressers and make-up artists put on the finishing touches and finally got a break to grab a bite of late lunch from a huge backstage pile of burritos.

The models rehearsed their strutting routes on the runway, while Lynne O'Neill, the show's director, coached them to keep the perfect gap between each other - not too far apart because it looks bad on video; not too close because that doesn't work for photos.

"It's my first time at New York Fashion Week. I like the feeling. I like the cold weather," Polly Ho, a designer with Hong Kong-based brand Loom Loop, said backstage at the New York Fashion Week (NYFW) venue at Moynihan Station in Midtown Manhattan.

It was 26 degrees outside in New York City but warm and cozy inside the showroom.

"Relax your face, I want to see your soul," O'Neill told the young models who come from all over the world to take part in one of the world's hottest fashion events.

"Everyone is so professional, the whole team, the way they are, the way they chill," said Ho. "They are really chill. When you tell them what you want, they make it happen for you. I think that's New York."

"So many famous designers started here. I would love to be one of them," she added.

Ho and two other designers were here to show their new collections at the Fashion Hong Kong show on Feb 12, the second day of the New York Fashion Week 2016 Fall/Winter season.

Organized and funded by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), the show, which costs more than $250,000 to stage, was only one component of the Big Apple event.

While Hong Kong Fashion Week and China Fashion Week in Beijing have gained increasing attention over the years, there are also a growing number of Chinese designers presenting their work at foreign fashion events, especially at such fashion meccas as New York, Paris, London and Milan.

NYFW is made up of a variety of branded events, including the most celebrated IMG New York Fashion Week, previously known as Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week New York, MADE Fashion Week for upcoming designers and a number of independent fashion shows.

New names

Some new Chinese names have emerged at recent NYFWs. Wang Tao, a designer from Shanghai, was back this time around for her fourth show. New York-based designer Vivienne Hu, who has partnered up with China mainland bra brand AtoG Lingerie, was also present. And there was Chinese-American designer Sandy Liang, who got lots of attention with her Chinatown grandmother-inspired creations.

Last season it was Fashion Shenzhen; this season was Fashion Hong Kong. And JD.com, Alibaba's biggest e-commerce rival in China, brought five Chinese designers to New York Fashion Week to help launch its US Fashion Mall, a website where Chinese consumers can shop for American brands online.

Harrison Wong, a men's wear designer taking part in Fashion Hong Kong, said that the main difference between attending fashion week in China and New York was the buyers. The most sought-after buyers always get invited to fashion weeks in China, but they rarely show up, he said.

"We are so hungry for buyers," said Loom Loop's Polly Ho.

The Hong Kong Trade and Development Council did a Fashion Hong Kong once before in 2003; now it was returning to NYFW after 13 years, having shifted its goal from drumming up publicity to making a real profit.

"In 2003 the main focus was to promote the image of Hong Kong's fashion design," said Ralph Chow, HKTDC's regional director in the US. "This time, we want to focus more on business development."

"We bring the designers to do the show. At the same time, we set up a studio for them to meet buyers and potential agents from the US market so that they can follow up with them to push business development," Chow explained. "From now on, we intend to keep coming year after year."

Chow believes it's important for the designers to show an interest in the market and NYFW was good way to do that.

"By coming over here, we show our eagerness to penetrate this market, we show that we have a specific interest in the US," he said.

After the models had finished their warm-ups and the technicians checked the lighting, the doors opened a little after 4 pm and the audience flocked in. A woman in a big fur coat entered carrying a fluffy lap dog that was dressed in tiny leggings and designer sneakers. Andreia Gibau, Miss Teen New York 2015, showed up in Loom Loop dress. Cameras flashed as photographers took photos of all the fashionistas taking selfies of themselves.

The riser for the media grew more and more crowded. A videographer, who had been working since the first show of the morning, yawned and stood up to stretch.

Crews tore off the plastic protecting the show floor from rehearsal footprints that could have potentially spoiled the photos. Lights dimmed, and show started.

Wong offered a lineup of men's wear with an urban edge that won high marks with the audience. Hidy Ng presented a women's collection that ranged from a black ruffled cape to a gold-lace-embellished tunic.

Ho's pieces were inspired by the Chinese legend The Butterfly Lovers, often called China's Romeo and Juliet, where the spirits of the lovers turned to butterflies, never to be parted again. Butterfly prints were in most of her pieces. There was also a playful dress with prints of farfalle - the "bow-tie" pasta named from the Italian word for butterfly.

The looking glass

As China rises in the world, it's becoming more and more common to see Chinese-inspired elements in high fashion. Witness the China: Through the Looking Glass exhibition put on by the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art last May. The show spread over three floors of the Met, featuring 140 examples of haute couture and ready-to-wear garments all illustrating the influence of Chinese culture on Western fashion.

On the night of the Met Gala for the show, celebrities from all over the world saluted Chinese culture on the red carpet. Singer Rihanna, wearing a 55-pound canary-yellow robe made by Chinese couturier Guo Pei, stole the show.

The dress made Guo famous overnight, and the 48-year-old Chinese designer recently presented a 43-dress haute couture show at Paris Fashion Week. It was her first time participating in a major fashion event.

Vivienne Tam, a Chinese-born designer in New York City, also experienced a tipping point in her career thanks to people's increasing taste for Asian culture.

"When I started my collection people told me, 'Vivienne, you will never be successful. Nobody will buy it because you're Asian, your inspiration is from China,'" she told Forbes in 2012.

But Tam persisted in searching for inspiration from her origins, creating a line based on symbols and prints she collected on a trip to the Forbidden City in Beijing in 2014.

On Monday during NYFW, she presented her new collection inspired by the cultures of Xinjiang and Central Asia. Her patterns evoked the ikat patterns of Central Asian carpets and tapestries, with flowers embroidered into wool and a mandarin-collared leather jacket in green, red and black.

Chinese style doesn't have to mean the exotic. Sandy Liang, a young Chinese-American designer, finds inspiration in her own life and her own neighborhood. Born in New York and raised in a Chinese immigrant family, she grew up observing how her grandmother and other Chinatown "grandmas" dressed.

"I would take so many photos of them in secret on my phone, because they were wearing such cool clothes. They don't try to dress more Western, they don't care about brands or anything. They wear all these prints and are just happy," said Liang in her Lower East Side studio where she and her friend Michelle Kim, both 24, manage the whole business.

Liang said she loved Chinatown grandmas' pants so much that she made a silhouette of wide, cropped pants based on them.

At this season's MADE Fashion Week presentation, Liang went with what she called the cool attitude of Chinatown grandmas and downtown New York girls. Thirteen models - half of them their friends - sat and danced and took selfies in Liang's new fur coats and puffers in the show space of the Standard Hotel in the Meatpacking District.

"They are real downtown New York girls," said Kim.

Chic is chic

Every Chinese designer has their own definition of "China Chic", and for Chinese designer Wang Tao, China Chic exists way below the surface.

So far, there has been no Chinese theme in any of the four seasons of her namesake brand Taoray Wang, and she has made her point.

"Too often Chinese designers think 'China Chic' means Chinese ethnic style or there has to be a dragon or a phoenix," Wang said. "If we want to make it on the international stage, we have to liberate ourselves from these stereotypes."

"Chinese culture is not what you can buy in the stores at the entrance to the Great Wall. It's so much more complicated," Wang said. "The true 'China Chic' should have an international perspective."

The key thing, she believes, is not to have Westerners wearing clothes with Chinese symbols, but rather to have Westerners wearing Chinese brands.

"It's possible that one day I will sew a dragon on my dress if I want to, but I will never do it just for the sake of 'China Chic'," said Wang.

For the fourth time, she's back in New York, this time departing from her past themes borrowed from popular movies - Black Swan, Fifty Shades of Grey, Out of Africa - this season Wang has taken inspiration from Victorian fashion and its patterns and tweeds.

"Historically, tailoring was common for men," said Wang. "But now it is providing the answer for modern women who want to be elegant, stylish and sexy. This season is filled with a combination of traditional heritage and modern silhouettes."

A global look

Wang said she wants to deliver a lineup for "independent and international women".

"I don't define my customers by race or nationality," she told China Daily. "They have an international background. They embrace diversity and are open-minded to try different things. They are well-educated and well-traveled. They are multi-cultural."

Taoray Wang collections' past three shows garnered a following among international media and buyers.

Last fall, Barneys New York, one of the most sought after buyers during NYFW, took a handful of her collection back to its office for consideration. Though they didn't buy anything, Wang said they were keeping an eye on her label.

"It's up to the buyers to decide if it's an international brand," said Wang. "Many Chinese designers have walked onto international stages and gotten a lot of press coverage, but nobody buys their clothes. To me that means nothing."

At the age of 30, international business consultant Zhou Yingying started AtoG Lingerie, a tailor-made bra brand based in Beijing.

Zhou was introduced to Chinese-born New York City designer Vivienne Hu, who came from an investment banking background and also made a career shift to fashion design. Hu had launched her first flagship stores in the Soho section of New York City and had more than 10 seasons of collections. The two collaborated this year at NYFW with a Vivienne Hu/AtoG Lingerie show.

"Coming from such similar backgrounds, we immediately understood each other," said Zhou. "And NYFW is the first official launch of AtoG Lingerie."

She said her team in Beijing would focus on finding the solutions to production, while she invites international designers, artists or even architects to design the looks of her bras.

Vivienne Hu is her first collaborator, and five of the bras designed by Hu and made by Zhou were shown on Vivienne Hu's runway.

"International fashion and apparel is a key strategic focus for us this year," said Lijun Xin, president of JD.com's apparel and home furnishing business unit. "That's because our 132 million upwardly mobile customers in China are showing a growing interest in this category and they want a one-stop destination where they can buy the latest items from a site that places a premium on authenticity and never tolerates counterfeits."

As the middle class grows in China, people are spending more on clothes and the competition among Chinese designers has never been stiffer.

And they have to compete with international brands that have successfully built strong relationships with Chinese customers. Many of the well-known luxury brands such as Chanel and Dior and retailers like Gap and H&M have begun using Chinese models for their advertising campaigns.

Breaking into the international market is also tough because of the price tag to not only stage a show, but more importantly, the effort it takes to build a network.

Naming a famous Chinese-American designer is easy - Vera Wang, Anna Sui and Jason Wu come immediately to mind.

But asking around NYFW, it's hard to find as many internationally known brand names from China. Many say Guo Pei would be the closest.

"China needs soft power. Soft power is not just a grand show," said Wang Tao. "It takes a lot of hard work. It's a craft that takes time to refine."