LAST WEEK, a delegation of Chinese designers was given an opportunity most aspiring fashionistas would kill for: they took their collections to Paris. As part of L'Annee de la Chine en France, a year-long cultural exchange between the two countries comprising art exhibitions and performances, the Fashion China event brought together six of the mainland's most promising talents for a show in the Louvre's Salle Le Notre.
It was meant to be a must-see. With all the hype surrounding China right now and its potential as the next big luxury market, organisers hoped the forward-looking fashion world would be gagging for a glimpse into what the PRC has to offer creatively. They could not have been more naive.
The unofficial Olympics of la mode, Paris fashion week is notoriously difficult to participate in, let alone place. Media attention, as any of the city's top press attaches will tell you, is not determined by talent alone. Increasingly dominated by mammoth luxury groups such as LVMH, Richemont and Gucci Group, whose influence and big advertising budgets often determine show scheduling and, consequently, editorial presence, the biannual event is tough on even the most visionary of independent designers (who, more often than not, end up with undesirable time slots, or sandwiched between mandatory-attendance shows).
By the time the Fashion China show took place last Monday, most of the important international buyers and journalists had gone home - not such a bad thing, in retrospect. Had they been there, the infamously tough crowd would have surely slaughtered the Chinese contingent.
'They have a long way to go,' said one French writer, diplomatically, while Hong Kong-based stylist Candice Poon was less forgiving. 'Now that was embarrassing,' she sighed. For as much as style Svengalis are desperate to discover China's sartorial messiah, he or she was not on the runway that night. Instead, there was a parade of cringe-inducing cliches which left the impression that the designers (Fang Ying, Gu Yi, Liang Zi, Luo Zheng, Wang Hongying and Wu Xuekai) had tried to anticipate what the west expected from the Middle Kingdom - and failed miserably.
There were chopsticks tucked into hair, hairpins holding up collars and more kung-fu shoes than you could shake a brocade fan at (not to mention evidence that panty-lines have not yet been outlawed everywhere).
One front-row attendee laughed out loud when a model, the front panel of her skirt rolled into a Chinese scroll, walked to the end of the runway before unfurling it for photographers. Critics would also have had fun with the fact that one strappy sandal seemed to disintegrate halfway down the catwalk, a mishap that would amuse Italian manufacturers worried that cheap, Chinese imports could drive them out of business. After the failure of the World Trade Organisation to agree on trade principles in Cancun last month, a number of Italian ministers have called on the European Union to impose duties on products from the mainland, which will have to work hard to reverse its reputation for producing low-quality, copied goods.
