How Celebrities Are Endorsing Chinese Fashion
The Met Gala is considered to be the most important fashion celebration in the world. Artists of all walks-of-life are preening themselves to perfection, hoping to make the ‘best-dressed’ list and ingratiate themselves in the eyes of America’s sharpest fashion editor, Anna Wintour. As the New York Times stated shortly after this year’s Met Ball, "It's called the Met Gala, but it's definitely Anna Wintour's party.” You won’t be anybody in fashion if you are blacklisted from this sensational bash.
The Spring 2015 exhibition at the Costume Institute of New York's Metropolitan Museum was 'China: Through The looking Glass', thus ringing the bell as the designated theme for the world-famous launch party. The exhibition delves into the impact of Chinese aesthetics on Western fashion and how China has fuelled the fashionable imagination for the longest of times. However, if chinoiserie and folk costumes were an attraction to Occidentals of centuries past, our generation is more in tune with the rise of modern fashion in China. The influence of young Chinese designers on our shores is a sure force to be reckoned with, especially as Hollywood is warming up to its exoticness. Central Saint Martins-educated Huishan Zhang and couture designer Guo Pei were two of the names to dress celebrities at this year’s Met Ball.
The most famous of them all has to be award-winning designer Ji Cheng who trained at the Instituto Marangoni in Milan and shows her collections at Shanghai Fashion Week (headliner), Singapore Fashion Week, China Fashion Week and London Fashion Week. The Chinese designer is renowned for expertly blending Eastern influences with Western tailoring, refusing to fall prey to the hackneyed stereotypes claiming that Chinese fashion only consists of cheongsam dresses, platform shoes and Geisha hair.
When a large car company was on the hunt for a Chinese fashion icon to pair with one of the world's most famous music sensations, the first port of call was Ji Cheng. The project will hit TV screens in August.
The designer says, "Being selected to work on a high profile international project was a dream come true. It was also a lot of fun to work in Hollywood. It was my first time there and it was incredible." She goes on to say, "It has been a true honour to represent China and our fashion industry and to have a new and global-reaching platform to showcase my work.”
Our fashion magazines also embrace the current enthusiasm for Chinese designers and their avant-garde aesthetic, beautifully marrying Western and Eastern heritage and innovation. The June 2015 issue of Vogue Italia was entirely focused on China and its up-and-coming fashion, with designer Ji Cheng prominently featured in the fashion pages. Chinese fashion is without a doubt exploding onto our fashion scene, injecting freshness and a new perspective on the sometimes ‘deja-vu’ feeling of our most established labels. China is also the country with the highest number of luxury shoppers, boosting their own economy but also heavily contributing to ours. Sadly, the one hurdle threatening the export and acceptance of Chinese fashion by Westerners remains the general misconception that anything ‘made in China’ is cheap or mass-produced. It is designers like Ji Cheng, with the help of clued-up Hollywood celebrities, who are well on their way to showing the world what China truly has to offer, and hopefully shaking off the unjust reputation actuated by our own fashion houses in search of cheap labour. Let the Chinese dragon rear its head…
The June 2015 Special China issue of Vogue Italia and Ji Cheng featured inside the magazine.
