Who's Putting On Shanghai Fashion Week?

What can a team of 26 do to make some noise outside the Big Four fashion week system?

Fourteen years ago, when the first Shanghai Fashion Week opened, it struck a humble pose — after all, Paris Fashion Week, the oldest of the Big Four, had been running for more than 90 years.

A fashion week that had suddenly appeared on the other side of the planet didn't draw much attention. For a long stretch, in fact, Shanghai Fashion Week barely registered at all — even members of the organizing committee joked that back then it was more like "amusing ourselves, playing small."

Eight years ago, in 2009, original Chinese design began to show promise — partly because homegrown designers were rising, but more because of an awkward problem. Every year the Big Four hold their fall/winter shows in February and March and their spring/summer shows in September and October. Those months follow the seasonal calendar: they suit the market and they fit how production works. Once designers unveil their fall/winter lines in February and March, factories start making the new pieces so they reach stores before the next season arrives, and adjusting and revising those designs alone eats up months.

Shanghai Fashion Week couldn't escape the same calendar. Within its own narrow window it had no way to steal attention while the Big Four were on, and pushing its dates back would leave factories unable to deliver on time — so it had no choice but to open in a rush the moment the Big Four wrapped up.

But the freshest fashion news had already been released at the Big Four. Fashion media sent big teams to relay the latest from those shows back to China, and both the clothes on the runway and the street-style photos outside the venues were updated at home in real time.

This calendar looked almost impossible to change. A century-old fashion convention had become the industry's unwritten rule — every designer who wanted a name set their clock to the Big Four's show dates, hoping to release their newest work at exactly those moments. And their clients, the international buyers and other retailers, placed their orders at the same time, because they knew next season's most cutting-edge clothes would appear at the Big Four.

By the time Shanghai Fashion Week came around, their budgets were nearly spent. In many cases they hadn't budgeted for Shanghai Fashion Week at all.

Nor was homegrown Chinese designers' creativity yet strong enough to carry a whole fashion week's standard. Over the past few years, to attract designers who were doing well (Qiu Hao, Shangguan Zhe and Wang Haizhen, for instance), the fashion week waived entry fees of 40,000 to 100,000 yuan and paid to build out their venues. But once some designers made their names, they too moved onto the Big Four's calendar, showing their most complete collections there first. Shanghai Fashion Week would still be pushed to the margins.

The original point of a fashion week was to pitch next season's clothes to retailers and fashion editors before they reached the market, showing off the sharpest design work — the summit of the whole industry's ecosystem. Now, with social media, fashion week has also become an active force in pop culture.

But in Shanghai, fashion week was an awkward, neither-here-nor-there presence.

Lü Xiaolei is the one who bears that awkwardness.

As early as 1999, Huang Qifan, then director of the Shanghai Municipal Economic Commission, founded the Shanghai International Fashion Center. This government body ran the International Fashion Culture Festival and began preparing Shanghai Fashion Week at the same time, hoping the event would turn Shanghai into an "international fashion metropolis." Lü Xiaolei had been working on Shanghai Fashion Week's predecessor, the Shanghai International Fashion Festival, since 1998, but she believed a festival format — or simply inviting big international names to walk the runway — could never really push China's fashion industry forward, so she took the lead in reshaping Shanghai Fashion Week.

From the outset, Shanghai Fashion Week was treated as part of "Shanghai's strategic goal of building an international trade center." The event was defined as "a national-level economic, trade and cultural event supported by the Ministry of Commerce and hosted by the Shanghai municipal government," and it received funding from the Shanghai municipal government. It was a government image project.

Lü Xiaolei is now general manager of the Shanghai International Fashion Center, in full charge of the fashion week's operations and management. Every year she hands the government a "report card" for this image project — a lovely picture of numbers that keep climbing.

In 2009, the year the fashion week began building up China's original independent designers, it held 10 shows over six days. This year, over eight days, the Xintiandi main venue alone hosted 50 shows, and the other three venues added up to 85.

The fashion week's four major exhibitions — the organizing committee's own Mode Shanghai apparel show, plus the partner shows Ontimeshow, Shitang and Dadashow — brought together nearly 1,000 exhibiting brands across more than 25,000 square meters, drawing 20,000 visitors: designers, retailers, photographers, writers, brand clients, bloggers, and celebrities and internet stars who knew exactly how to pose for the cameras.

But foot traffic was only part of the pressure, or the awkwardness. Getting more people to notice the fashion week underpins everything else: how deep it reaches into the industry chain, the city's image as a fashion capital, and the event's own competitiveness.

Lü Xiaolei has 26 people planning this with her. They are spread across the marketing department, which recruits brands for the Xintiandi runway; the exhibition department, which recruits showrooms for the Mode show; the marketing management department, which handles sponsorship; the general management department, which handles logistics and on-site construction; and the media center, which handles publicity.

Every April and October, they try to get as many people as possible to notice that the fashion week exists.

That isn't easy. Zhang Min, the marketing department manager, recalls that when she graduated and joined the organizing committee in 2009, a single designer was enough to focus attention on the fashion week. "I remember when we were doing fashion week back then, there was a designer who had come back from Saint Martins (Central Saint Martins in London). At the time the media gave that heavy, dedicated coverage. Now… you open just about any designer's résumé and it's Saint Martins, the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, France, Italy… there are just so many of them."

Once a designer's background could no longer be the selling point, the organizing committee had to rack its brains for new hooks.

1

This year, for the first time, the fashion week ran a consumer-facing event — a "Fashion Weekend" billed as "the world's first immersive fashion carnival." The idea came from scalpers. "If it weren't for those scalpers, I never would have thought of doing this," Lü Xiaolei said.

If you walked past any of the fashion week's venues during the event, scalpers on the street would hawk you a ticket. As more non-professionals got in that way, it began to undermine one of a fashion week's core functions: letting buyers see sample garments, ask prices and place orders. That lack of privacy was, in fact, what professional buyers had complained about most in the past.

Lü Xiaolei didn't want the fashion week called "unprofessional," but she also didn't want to lose the crowd of outsiders who just wanted to gawk. She knew the consumer end was a link she could never avoid. "We need to open this channel up — if you don't build it, one end or the other will block up eventually," she said. Fashion week mainly serves B2B deals, but if buyers order at fashion week and consumers don't buy, inventory piles up. "Two rounds of piled-up inventory and buyers stop wanting to place orders; it goes back to consignment, which for designers becomes a headache all over again."

Starting last year, whenever Lü Xiaolei talked to potential partners, she would raise the idea of doing something on the consumer side. The first sketch was to copy London and put on a fashion weekend, giving ordinary consumers a chance to watch shows, browse fashion markets and sit in on fashion forums.

But the plan was held up for a long while, because "it really burns money." Lü Xiaolei talked to at least four possible partners; some conversations died halfway through, because the other side either wouldn't put up money or wouldn't put in the work.

This was also unlike finding partners for fashion week itself, since the Fashion Weekend's target audience was consumers. Lü Xiaolei knew that winning this crowd's attention would take celebrity resources — exactly what the organizing committee lacked most. "You know, we make clothes — where would we get celebrity resources? We have a few designers, and we treat them like celebrities," Lü Xiaolei said.

The eventual co-organizer was IPCN International Media, which holds the Chinese rights to overseas formats such as China's Got Talent and The Voice of China. After more than half a year of talks, IPCN showed more sincerity than the other candidates — it brought in the director of the France Pavilion at the World Expo, for instance, to plan crowd flow. During the Expo the China Pavilion carried visitors up by elevator, which caused congestion, while the France Pavilion used ramps to spread the crowd out. The director applied the same logic at the Fashion Weekend: before reaching the main hall, visitors had to climb a tall staircase laid with red carpet.

Some problems still couldn't be solved. The organizing committee helped connect IPCN with a number of designer brands, but many design studios have only three to five people. They had to prepare their fashion-week runway shows and exhibitions and look after clients all week. And before fashion week had even ended — the Fashion Weekend opened on fashion week's final day — they had to start building their Fashion Weekend booths, for a three-day run.

That stretch is usually the most critical time for designer brands to chase and process orders, and since this season's fashion week fell later than usual, delivery deadlines were already tight. Design teams easily lost track of one thing while handling another.

Lü Xiaolei knew about the time pressure, but she wasn't prepared to compromise. She was still betting that "once this is established, and they see it's good for them, they'll prepare ahead of time next time."

As for the money-burning she mentioned, the venue offered a glimpse. Nearly every step brought another staff member in a badge; together they made up a paid crew of 560. Over three days, more than 200 models a day performed in interactive shows that ran as long as nine hours. There was also a celebrity forum and performances featuring singer Yuan Yawei, model Xi Mengyao, blogger Lyn Slater and Chen Xingru.

IPCN founder Yang Yuancao admitted that "if you look at it purely as an event, it burns money." She kept coming back to the word IP: "But if you look at it as an IP for a lifestyle, it has a lot of potential."

She also plans to hold the Fashion Weekend several times a year in several cities — this October it may partner with Beijing Fashion Week, and after that "it'll be Shenzhen, Guangzhou — ideally it blooms everywhere," she said.

Lü Xiaolei was not as optimistic as Yang Yuancao. Two days before the Fashion Weekend opened she still had little confidence, and she hadn't decided whether it would happen again. All she would say was: "Let's build momentum this first time — get the concept out there."

Yang Yuancao called the ticket price for this exhibition "the price of a bowl of beef noodles" — an early-bird 20 to 30 yuan from March 1 to April 13, rising to 60 yuan only during the three days the event ran. Yang said 30,000 tickets were sold, which puts total revenue at 1.8 million yuan at the very most, and probably far below that.

Against that: pay for 560 staff, celebrity appearance fees, 95 performances large and small, and three days' rent on the venue — the Shanghai Exhibition Center, at 9,000 square meters, is 10 times the size of London's Fashion Weekend venue. The celebrity fees alone could have run anywhere from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand yuan.

2

"The bigger the sponsor, the more headaches — that's just how it is." That was marketing department manager Zhang Min's first reaction when she heard last November that fashion week would be working with JD.com.

Her job revolves mainly around recruiting brands in advance for the Xintiandi runway. Brands that show at Xintiandi usually come through three channels: designer brands that have worked with fashion week before; up-and-coming designers the organizing committee scouts and invites directly; and designer brands that apply online. This season, across all three, Zhang Min received more than 200 applications and, after three rounds of screening, picked 50.

JD.com was one of the 50, but it hadn't come through any of those channels. It was a textbook outsider.

JD.com was this season's main sponsor of Shanghai Fashion Week and also a sponsor of designers, staging three JD.com shows at the Xintiandi main venue. The first role was familiar to JD.com; the second, working with designers, was something even Lü Xiaolei doubted. When JD.com's Beijing team first approached the organizing committee last year, Lü Xiaolei made an excuse that she was too busy, mindful of the earlier precedent with Tmall: "They wouldn't put up the money." Still, she didn't want to lose such a big sponsor, so she had a team member handle the talks for her.

Compared with Tmall, JD.com seemed more willing to cooperate. Its intention was clear too — it wanted to promote JD.com's apparel business, which has little to do with "avant-garde fashion." Zhang Min saw this coming from the start: "They don't understand fashion very well. This process took us an enormous amount of time."

The designer brands JD.com put forward, batch after batch, came to more than 20 by Zhang Min's count — rejected and sent back, then resubmitted, three times over. The first batch didn't surprise her: "A lot of them were e-commerce-oriented designers, internet-celebrity e-commerce types. We felt that first batch wasn't up to our level. We care more about a sense of creative design," she said.

The second batch was a pleasant surprise for Zhang Min and her team, including some well-known domestic designer brands — but they eventually discovered JD.com hadn't actually reached agreements with those designers. Some of the brands didn't even have a storefront on JD.com; it was as if JD.com had been cramming at the last minute. That wishful thinking failed again. Only with the third batch did Zhang Min and JD.com settle on the three designers who ended up showing. "We felt it was okay," she said.

Designers were just the first step in the trouble. Signing a contract with a large corporation gave Zhang Min a headache too. Normally a brand confirmed for the runway receives a show contract from the organizing committee, and most sign it and mail it back within a week. Take JICHENG, a brand that has shown at Shanghai Fashion Week many times: "You basically don't have to worry about how the contract gets signed — you send them the materials, they send the materials back, and it's smooth," Zhang Min said.

That same process took JD.com more than three months. "We were going back and forth with JD.com from January all the way to April." Zhang Min normally finishes the whole sponsor-recruitment process by late February or early March, because publicity has to start building by mid-March. JD.com threw off her schedule.

Big companies have complicated internal processes that stretch things out, and their legal departments are pickier still. Experienced designer brands know the runway process and the rules, and both sides work on an unspoken understanding. But JD.com wanted every clause of the contract "calculated down to the last detail." The contract says a show can't run over time, or there's a penalty; JD.com would ask Zhang Min, "What if we run over? We might need extra time" — and the clause would have to be renegotiated. For designer brands the story ends when the show does, but JD.com's show also had to be followed by a party, which meant another round of bargaining over what each side would give and get.

At the end of every season, Zhang Min assesses the brands that showed, and the live audience is one of her main criteria. Ninety percent of the audience at any show is invited by the brand itself, and both the size and the quality of that audience count. "Some brands just bring in people who bought scalped tickets at the door — it's obvious, and it does affect whether they get to show again next season," she said.

She wants brands to invite industry professionals or celebrities, because celebrities "make a good hook and lift our profile." This season the number of celebrities invited by brands suddenly jumped — but more noticeable were the sweet-faced livestream hosts broadcasting from the shows, as many as 10 to 20 at some brands' shows.

The organizing committee likes to have a full grasp of any coverage about itself, and livestreaming makes it warier: "Their content isn't something we can control." Internet celebrities and KOLs, in the committee's view, are neither a plus nor a minus.

3

To get more people to come, you first need a venue — and a stable one. Gemma Williams, a fashion curator from London, is a regular at Shanghai Fashion Week. Before this season began, her assistant lined up seven or eight things for her to get through each day. On her last day in Shanghai, Gemma realized she had missed one or two of them almost every day, largely because time kept going into finding new venue locations. "Shanghai's traffic is really terrible, and the venue changes every time — some of the new places are genuinely hard to find," she said.

Her complaints were mostly about Mode, the official apparel show the fashion week organizing committee launched in 2015, built mainly around showrooms. Mode has now held five seasons; the first had 9 showrooms and 100 brands, and this season is several times that — 36 showrooms and more than 600 brands.

But the venue problem still hasn't been solved. In a little over two years it has moved three times.

Zhang Jie, who runs Mode, knows that each move brings out some new flaw, minor or serious: Gemma couldn't find the venue; this time visitors complained that the 12,000-square-meter Supply and Marketing Cooperative Building had no Wi-Fi signal at all, because there was no cell tower nearby.

Finding an office building or empty lot of 8,000 to 10,000 square meters in central Shanghai, with easy transport, isn't easy. In Zhang Jie's words: "A place that fits this much capacity, sitting vacant in the city center — the odds are just too tiny. Think how much a piece of real estate like that is worth."

Commercial property makes its money on rent, but Mode needs the space for only two weeks a year. For now Zhang Jie has only a stopgap: she deliberately picks the window just before a property starts leasing to tenants and squeezes the show in then, so that while she's renting the space she's also marketing it for the owner. As soon as the owner starts leasing in earnest, Zhang Jie has to pack up and go.

Mode lasted three seasons at Datong Fang and one at the Expo Park, and this time at the Supply and Marketing Cooperative Building its first season was also its last — no exceptions.

This season Mode drew 1,500 visitors a day, flat with the previous season, with a 70% return rate (70% of the showrooms had also exhibited last season), which looks like a decent result.

But Zhang Jie's problem has come around again: "As soon as this ends, the very next question we face is: where's the next venue?"

Right now the organizing committee is trying to build fashion week into "Asia's largest order-placing season," hoping to close as many deals as possible within the windows it has set.

The problems that need solving are often very basic — plagiarism, for one. This season Zhang Jie started screening visitors: only five categories of people — agents, buyers, media, trend forecasters and factories — are allowed into the show; everyone else is turned away. Visitors register online and are checked again on site with a business card.

The result: against 30% buyers in the first season, this season professional visitors rose from 48.55% on the opening day to 57.88% on the closing day, of which 43.31% were channel buyers and 14.57% agents.

Lü Xiaolei admits that even in Shanghai, the fashion week's host city, the buying-store sector is fairly small, and buying stores nationwide are not very professional. At Mode she often sees buyers up from northern China who seem eager to try the new pieces on themselves first, on the logic of "sell it if it sells; if it doesn't, I'll wear it myself." "I can say that a lot of buyers just don't think big enough. They're buying for their own taste, not for a crowd," Lü Xiaolei said.

So when international buyers share their experience — among them the global luxury department store Selfridges and the womenswear buyer Machine-A — Lü Xiaolei listens, but doesn't necessarily take it in. "They're brands with 70 or 80 years behind them; here a 30-year-old brand already counts as an old name… the business system is different too. Their buying system is mature. And ours? A lot of our buying stores are about to go under."

Many large traditional Chinese department-store and retail groups are trying to reinvent themselves, and all of them want to bring in more design-driven brands. This season Shanghai Bailian, Guiyang Xingli, Wangfujing Department Store, New World Department Store and Shinkong Group all turned up at Shanghai Fashion Week.

Shanghai Bailian has also put together its own buying team over the past six months, but the one thing it lacks is experienced buyers — something that usually takes more than 10 years to build. "It has to be led by someone really, really formidable for this to work; otherwise I think it's pretty tough," Lü Xiaolei said of Chinese department stores building buying teams. She is also unsure how much transaction volume these department stores can bring the fashion week, or whether they can pull the Chinese market along. All she would say was: "We'll see next season. I don't know either."

As for JD.com, which came to Shanghai Fashion Week to get in on the action, things may not have gone as it hoped. The numbers JD.com was willing to share: the three shows drew 350, 250 and 650 people respectively, and with the after-party the day's total came to 1,400.

Those numbers may need a discount, though. At the least, we observed that five minutes before JD.com's first show began, more than half the seats in the runway's second row were still empty. They still hadn't filled by the time the show ended.

Before the shows, JD.com even gave fashion week a dedicated entry point on the homepage of its apparel mall, introducing the three designers' backgrounds and posting a few sample garments. The moment each show ended, the runway pieces went live on JD.com, ready to buy.

Traffic was one of the resources Lü Xiaolei valued most. "JD.com provides traffic, and once there's spending they'll push even more traffic, so designers sell more," Lü Xiaolei said. "After all, it's very expensive for designers to open their own stores and go it alone."

JD.com's first designer on the runway, JO QIAO DING, priced its new fall/winter pieces at roughly 2,000 to 5,000 yuan. As of now, the reviews shown on JD.com still stand at zero.

On the evening of April 18, Lü Xiaolei and her team of 26 took a group photo to celebrate the end of the season. That same day, a large ad for the spring/summer fashion week, set for October 12–18, was already playing on the electronic screens along Shanghai's Bund.

Cover image and photos in this article provided by Shanghai Fashion Week.