The global names in luxury fashion aren’t Chinese. Two brands, Shang Xia and Icicle, could change that

Signed with a casual “Yang x”, the message on the invitation to the runway show was just as simple: “Welcome to the New Chapter.” The Shanghai-based brand Shang Xia had registered for the first time on the official Paris fashion show calendar, and was presenting its spring/summer 2022 collection on the morning of October 4, 2021. It would be the inaugural collection for the label by its young, Chinese-born designer, Yang Li, whose appointment had been officially announced less than two weeks before show date. Handling the défilé or parade was La Mode en Images, the pre-eminent fashion production company also staging Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, Valentino, Rick Owens, Olivier Theyskens, Loewe and Coperni. On two rows of white boxes arranged in a wide circle, a full house sat under the arching white roof of a former industrial warehouse in the ever-trendy Le Marais neighbourhood. The models, walking with panache and easy elegance to lo-fi electronic music, showed off clean, minimal looks with fine tailoring and sharp cuts. “The show began with an unlined white leather coat whose back was quilted like a puffer, worn with flat-front ’90s slim pants with a contrast-colour waistband,” reported Vogue. Along with some white and black pieces were plenty of bold ones – neon yellow, pink and orange, like highlighter markers. There were zipped T-shirts, wraparound capes and a bubblegum pink coat with patch pockets. “The accessories,” Vogue noted, “were just this side of sci-fi: a white leather clutch in the shape of a right triangle painted to a car-finish gleam and house slippers encased in see-through plastic bubbles.” How luxury Chinese perfumes are riding the ‘China cool’ wave Fashion critic Godfrey Deeny called Li’s “brainy and beguiling high-colour hybrid blend of East and West” the biggest debut in Paris and named it among the 12 most important shows of the fashion season in Paris, London and Milan. “One of the great mysteries in fashion is that two decades after research assistant Roopa Purushothaman coined the term BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), there has never really emerged a champion designer from any of those four great nations,” Deeny wrote on the Fashion Network website. “That Holy Grail for a BRIC fashion master may well have ended today, after Yang Li hit his fashion home run in Paris.” Just a few decades ago, luxury goods were far out of reach for most Chinese consumers, and many top brands were not sold in China. But in 2012, it overtook Japan as the second largest luxury market, behind the United States. And, in 2021, sales of personal luxury goods in China rose by 36 per cent (to 471 billion yuan, or US$71 billion) compared with the previous year, and to more than double those of pre-pandemic 2019. By 2025, China will account for half of all luxury purchases, according to the global management consulting firm Bain & Company. At the same time, China has become a major luxury manufacturer, with many major brands carrying out a significant part of their production there. The main challenge for the China fashion world is dealing with three simple words that for decades have meant inferior rather than fashion-forward: ‘Made in China’ Jing Daily Yet none of the global luxury brands have been Chinese-born, or led by a Chinese-born designer. At home, as Chinese fashion companies experience fast growth, many have begun to eye the global market. So how long will it be before one stands alongside the likes of Dior, Louis Vuitton or Saint Laurent? Or rather: can China become more than just a luxury consumer market and production centre? Can it have a strong voice in the creative conversation at the highest level of that global industry as well? “At this table of international luxury giants, you’ve got your usual suspects from France, the Diors and all these brands built on reputation and established over many years,” Li tells me in Paris in March. “But there is a glaring empty chair at that table. At the moment there is an absence of a Chinese representative at that table.” True. Though with Li as creative director at Shang Xia, perhaps not for much longer. “The 20th century belonged to the United States with Coca-Cola, Nike, Calvin Klein and its values exported all over the world, from the American way of life to business techniques,” an industry insider told Le Journal du Luxe (in French) at the end of 2020. “Afterwards, if we talk about fashion, it’s Europe: France with couture, Italy with designers like Armani or Prada, but also England, for men. At the end of the 20th century, there was the Japanese and Korean wave with conceptual fashion. And now it’s China’s turn.” That prediction has been around for a while. In 2009, The New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn wrote, “It is becoming, in fact, more and more clear that the next wave of innovation will come from another culture – from China or India, perhaps, as it did in the ’80s from Japan.” She then quoted Giorgio Armani’s former right-hand man and deputy general manager John Hooks: “When a culture is self-confident, it can translate what the rest of the world wants.” That was more than a dozen years ago, and Chinese luxury brands have not yet been able to compete on the global stage. Perhaps partially blocking that path is reputation. Made in China, with European character: brands bucking trends “Despite the emergence of so much talent,” reported the Jing Daily, “the main challenge for the China fashion world is dealing with three simple words that for decades have meant inferior rather than fashion-forward: ‘Made in China’.” Certainly, there has been some shift in perception over the past decade, with Apple among the companies that have helped remove some of that stigma. While there are factories in China producing subpar goods, it is also home to some of the highest-tech and most dynamic ones in the world. Few would accuse iPhones, MacBook Pros or Apple Watches of being low quality. The same can be said about high-end fashion. China has become not just one of the largest markets for luxury fashion but a major manufacturer of the goods themselves. All or part of the collections of some of the most popular luxury brands are made in China, including Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Marc Jacobs, Armani and Louis Vuitton. Balenciaga’s “fugly” Triple S trainers – “Quite simply the coolest, most provocative artefact to come off the menswear catwalk in modern times […] Patient Zero for a luxury shoe industry now worth hundreds of millions of dollars; they are the Nike Air Jordans, or Reebok Classics of their time,” as GQ magazine put it – were made in Italy when they launched in 2017. But production quickly shifted to China in 2018. Their status remained, and so did their hefty €850 (US$895) price tag. Shang Xia was founded in 2008 as a joint venture between French luxury goods manufacturer Hermès and 33-year-old designer Jiang Qiong Er. A graduate of Shanghai’s Tongji University and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (National School of Decorative Arts) in Paris, Jiang had been the first Chinese designer to work with Hermès when the house commissioned her to do its window displays in China. Through that work she met Patrick Thomas, then-CEO of Hermès, and Pierre-Alexis Dumas, its artistic director. Their shared love of craftsmanship led to a joint partnership, with Hermès reportedly owning 90 per cent of the shares and Jiang the remaining 10 per cent. Shang Xia is the perfect example of China. Because China is always contrasting but somehow balanced Yang Li, Chinese-born designer “Both of us [Hermès and Jiang] were passionate about how to translate and turn the Chinese heritage into a contemporary China style and lifestyle: a dialogue with China’s exquisite handicrafts, 5,000 years of cultural treasure, oriental aesthetics and life philosophy,” Jiang told TLmag in 2020. They envisioned a new type of luxury brand that blended traditional Chinese craftsmanship with contemporary design in a global, modern context. It began as an elegant lifestyle brand and expanded from homeware, jewellery and accessories such as silk scarves into ready-to-wear apparel. Two of its best-known homewares showcase this aesthetic: an elegant tea service of eggshell porcelain and thin, woven strips of bamboo that takes two months to craft, and a minimalistic, square-cut carbon fibre chair in shiny or matt lacquering. “The details of the Ming style have been boldly abstracted layer by layer to leave only the slenderest, lightest, thinnest frame,” runs the brand’s description of the chair. Both are sold in the boutique of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, in Paris, the tea set for €4,490 and the chair for €3,650. The name Shang Xia literally means “up-down”. The founding principles, according to Jiang, are drawn from the philosophy of Taoism: “In life there are opposite sides. You should not choose one or another, you should keep both, make them dialogue, and find the balance in between, and that’s our life philosophy.” Li, meanwhile, says that “Shang Xia is the perfect example of China. Because China is always contrasting but somehow balanced.” The designs had, he adds, “traditional rooting while being completely modern, or even futuristic”. I think it’s important that we share the China of today not just with the Chinese, but with the rest of the world Jiang Qiong Er, Shang Xia founder In 2010, the first Shang Xia store opened on Shanghai’s upscale Huaihai Road, next to Hong Kong Plaza. Featuring a translucent, white glass facade, the store created a dreamy feel, with petal-shaped pieces of white fabric suspended along the ceiling. The store was designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, best known for works such as the Suntory Museum of Art and the LVMH Group’s Japan headquarters in Osaka. A second Shang Xia outpost opened at the China World Mall in Beijing in 2012. Two years later, a three-storey flagship store in Shanghai’s Xintiandi neighbourhood opened in a French-style, early 20th century red-brick building. Kuma handled both designs. It didn’t take long for Shang Xia to make an international foray. In 2013, it opened a store in Paris, a logical location given its Hermès connection. “I think it’s important that we share the China of today not just with the Chinese, but with the rest of the world, too,” Jiang said at the store opening. “The people of Paris are very sensitive to quality, poetry, culture, beauty and love. We are looking for a place to share this culture with an audience that is receptive to all of this.” Occupying a narrow, 45-degree-corner storefront, it looked directly down Rue de Sèvres to Le Bon Marché, one of Europe’s largest department stores. Paris, Milan … Chengdu? Rise of China’s new fashion powerhouses “We conceived a cloud-like space made of thin ceramic panels,” wrote Kuma’s studio, which designed this store, too. “Historically, ceramic has been a crucial element of Chinese culture. Chinese ceramic had also long been an object of admiration in Europe. “In the products of Shang Xia, ceramic plays a special role. In this shop, very thin ceramic panels, as many as 6,000, are suspended from the ceiling to cover the entire space. The glossy white face, unique to ceramic, created a lighting state you might find in the Impressionists’ pointillistic painting and you feel like you are staying in a cloud.” With the braided appearance of the stacked tiles along its curving walls, some also suggested it was like walking into a bird’s nest. Today, Shang Xia has more than 15 stores across China. In 2019, it saw a 60 per cent increase in sales. Yet Hermès decided to sell most of its stake. In December 2020, the Italian Agnelli family’s holding company, Exor, invested nearly US$100 million to become the largest shareholder of Shang Xia. Led by the ambitious John Elkann, Exor controls some jaw-dropping names. There’s Ferrari and the automotive group Stellantis (with 15 brands in its stable, including Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Maserati, Chrysler, Citroën, Peugeot and Jeep), Juventus Football Club and The Economist Group, plus it has a 24 per cent stake in Christian Louboutin, the luxury retailer best known for its red-soled shoes. Duty-free spending surge in Hainan prompts launch of new supply route But far from those weighing Shang Xia down, this co-parenting fits nicely with the duality of the brand: Hermès is the epitome of slow fashion while Exor’s Ferrari is the very symbol of speed. “[Alongside] Hermès, we look forward to accompanying Jiang Qiong Er in the years ahead,” Elkann said in a press release announcing the deal, “supporting her in building a great company with the ambition to increase the appreciation of the contemporary creativity and traditional culture of China to a growing client base worldwide.” In other words, it was time to step on the gas. Shang Xia set up a design studio in Paris to complement work in Shanghai, and looked for a designer who could help achieve its global ambition. On September 22, 2021, the brand announced the appointment of the 34-year-old Li as its fashion creative director, effective immediately. Shang Xia was being relaunched as a global luxury Chinese house with a focus on fashion. “I am not a magician, I know it is a challenge,” Li told Le Monde newspaper upon his appointment. “But I have a rare privilege: that of having a blank page in front of me to define a new luxury, a Chinese style.” While accepting Shang Xia’s offer meant putting his own brand on hiatus, he was eager for the opportunity to forge a Chinese brand on the international stage. From the beginning, one of his overarching goals was to establish China as a creative force. “It’s been my dream since being in the fashion business,” he confided to Vogue at his first Shang Xia show. Why Western luxury brands bought by Chinese investors fail Twelve days after the announcement, Shang Xia staged in Paris its first-ever runway show, with Elkann sitting in the audience alongside Jiang and the two Hermès executives who were key in starting the brand, Thomas and Dumas. Asked for a comment on the show by Women’s Wear Daily, Elkann expressed optimism about Li’s work. “And what’s wonderful is that it will actually be in stores in China tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll have a very quick reaction, and it just shows how a company like Shang Xia is able to move fast.” Born in Beijing in 1987, Li spent the first 10 years of his life in the Chinese capital before moving to Perth, Australia. After graduating from high school, he attended London’s Central Saint Martins, one of the world’s top schools for fashion. (Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen and John Galliano are among a long list of notable alumni.) In 2010, after interning at Raf Simons in Belgium, Li founded his own brand in London. “I started my fashion design career at 23 because I knew I needed to start young, with naivety to navigate through the chaos,” he tells me in Paris. It certainly allowed him to quickly develop a singular style, an originality praised just a few years later by Vogue. “Li’s aesthetic is wholly his own,” it noted. In 2014, Li was shortlisted for the inaugural edition of the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers. “Blending classic tailoring and architectural silhouettes with a healthy dose of punk,” the prize noted, “Li is creating looks that are very much his own.” Shang Xia’s Paris offices are on the narrow Rue du Vertbois, in the northern part of Le Marais, among record shops and booksellers, bakeries and hairdressers, and just a block from the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts). How do we represent the Chinese market and Chinese consumer, but on the international stage? Yang Li On a recent March afternoon, Li sits in an illuminated showroom among shelves of Shang Xia goods and two-wheeled hanger racks holding the recent collection. The centre of the room is open, with the offices and workshops above screened off by curtains. Li has long, straight hair parted down the centre and tucked behind his ears. Dressed in all black, the only trace of colour is the red piping across the toes of his thick-soled creepers, a collaboration with British shoemaker George Cox. He is soft-spoken and articulate. “Li’s clothes don’t reference nostalgia, pay homage to a lost bit of history or attempt to reinvent another era. They are decidedly of the here and now,” wrote The Washington Post critic Robin Givhan in 2014. With influences ranging from goth and punk to Australian skateboarding culture, there is plenty of black in his past collections. But these pieces on the racks from the recent Shang Xia collection pop with high-voltage energy. He wanted this first collection to capture the here and now of China’s vitality and untamed optimism – and stay away from any dragon motifs or silk. “How do we represent the Chinese market and Chinese consumer, but on the international stage?” he ponders. “One of the strongest and most immediate things to work with is colour. It is very immediate and extremely powerful.” When the collection appeared, he told British fashion magazine Tank, “When you are in China, it’s the most colourful, urban landscape you’ve ever seen. Lights, LED screens everywhere and everybody’s also dressed extremely colourfully. It was very important to mimic the feeling I have when I take the plane from London and land in Shanghai – it’s really like an LSD experience, a feast for the eyes.” ‘Fashion is tired’: how it can change, starting with fashion weeks This idea of colour is part of the brand’s DNA, he says, and it will remain in the collections ahead. Indeed, the following week, at the beginning of April, he launched Shang Xia’s autumn/winter 2022 collection. While it retained the fine tailoring of the first collection, with plenty of dazzling, well-cut coats, he added sportswear basics, including long-cut hoodies with an oversized front pocket. “Cut is one of Li’s fixations, and squares, circles and triangles are part of his Shang Xia vocabulary,” reported Vogue. “A double-face white knit column dress was designed with a square-cut back; where it folds over at the shoulder, it creates a dramatic, almost sculptural line and provides a flash of high-contrast colour.” This time the collection wasn’t shown on the runway. Rather, 27 looks were offered in online images taken in the design studio during fittings, where a single model was photographed in front of a virtually shadowless white screen. Shang Xia never planned to join the treadmill of seasonal runway shows anyway. It was rethinking the fundamentals of the business. One of the decisions was to launch the collection virtually. Another was to close the bricks-and-mortar store in Paris. Just as Shang Xia was plotting its next move, another high-end Chinese fashion brand was opening outposts in Paris, as a contender to be the first wholly Chinese-born company among the global fashion elite. It, too, was expanding from China via Paris, but taking a very different path. Luxury fashion needs to evolve. Here’s how it could start Narrow, generally nondescript and extending northwest from the edge of the Louvre, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré (with the adjoining Rue Saint-Honoré) is arguably the world’s most fashionable and luxurious street. Virtually every global fashion house has a shop on or near it. A block from the Hermès flagship store and among rather august neighbours – across the street is the British embassy, a few doors from the US ambassador’s residence and, in the other direction, the Élysée Palace, the official residence of the president of France – the latest store from Shanghai-based Icicle opened at the end of February. Previously occupied by Ermenegildo Zegna, the building was gutted and given as its centrepiece a monumental staircase of pale Paloma limestone quarried in Spain that curls from the ground floor through the two upper levels. Designed by Belgian architect Bernard Dubois, the store has a luxurious, seductive minimalism, with natural, pale tones and sumptuous natural light, rendering it both serene and highly Instagramable. This is Icicle’s fourth outpost in Paris, and its most emphatic statement that it, too, deserves a voice in the global luxury conversation. Icicle was founded in Shanghai in 1997 by husband-and-wife team Ye Shouzeng and Tao Xiaoma, who had both studied at Donghua University, one of China’s leading fashion design schools. They couldn’t find the kind of professional clothes that suited them as recent graduates, so they designed items for themselves. It was a time of urbanisation and a growing middle class gaining purchasing power, says Isabelle Capron, Icicle’s top executive in Paris. During this wave of movement to the cities, they saw a new class of urban professionals with new fashion needs. They wanted to make clothes, but without damaging nature. “This was their vision,” she explains. “You can say that they’re an eco-brand, because in the DNA is this idea of making fashion while respecting nature, making beautiful fashion that can be attractive, especially by using natural materials, either undyed or dyed with natural pigments.” Passionate about fabrics, Icicle worked with silk, cotton and cashmere, but also less glamorous materials such as hemp, one of the most sustainable fibres: it requires little water, is renewable and has a less harmful environmental impact than nearly any other alternative. The concept is “natural and durable fashion”, says Capron. “Natural meaning we take from nature, and respect nature in everything we do. And,” she stresses, “durable” – the opposite of fast fashion. “The style is timeless. It is beyond seasons. We are not slaves to seasons. You can wear the clothes for 10 years, for 15 years. And then naturally one day, those clothes will go back to nature. It’s a kind of circular fashion, a slow fashion. Twenty-five years ago, no one was thinking about this.” With 271 stores and counting in 100 cities in China, Icicle has become one of the country’s best known clothing brands. In 2020, it generated €334 million in retail turnover, and, despite the pandemic, grew by more than 12 per cent from 2019. In 2020, it topped Tmall’s famous Double 11 Singles’ Day sales for luxury womenswear. (Tmall is operated by Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post.) 12 hours, US$1.9 billion in goods: the success of China’s ‘lipstick brother’ While there was an international vision from the beginning, it took more than 15 years to take the first steps outside the domestic market. In 2013, Icicle set up a design studio in Paris’s 16th arrondissement, on Avenue Raymond-Poincaré, a stately thoroughfare that runs between Place Victor Hugo and the Trocadéro, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. Icicle chose Paris over London, Milan and New York and recruited from French luxury labels, hiring the highly experienced Capron as its international vice-president and general manager of its Paris Design Centre. Capron had been executive vice-president at Fauchon during a period of global expansion when the company became a leader in French luxury food and launched in more than 40 countries. Before that, she had worked in advertising with a focus on luxury brands in fashion and retail. Another important Paris hire was Bénédicte Laloux, a designer who has worked for Celine, Lanvin and Chloé. Laloux spent a year in China to better understand the Chinese fashion world, and has risen through the ranks to become Icicle’s creative director. The brand’s logo reads “Made in Earth”, which has a dual meaning. “Made in Earth means made with elements of the earth,” says Capron. “But it also means, made with the talent of Earth, the talent of the world, because we have an international team. Of course, we have the Chinese team in Shanghai, but we also have lots of international talent here [in Paris].” Icicle has some 2,700 employees, including around 60 in Paris. For Capron, the synergy between the two bases is key. In 2019, Icicle opened its first international boutique in a historic 1894 town house on the prestigious Avenue George V. Located just off the Champs-Élysées and near Louis Vuitton’s art deco flagship store, it is a just a door down from the Four Seasons Hotel George V, one of the world’s great (and most expensive) hotels, and diagonally opposite the new, ultra-luxurious Bvlgari Hotel. Dubois, who also designed this recent store, sought an aesthetic that captured the company’s philosophy of finding harmony between man and nature. The 440 square metres (4,740 square feet) of space spread out over four floors is spacious and well lit. The floors are made with pale Paloma limestone, while dust from the same stone is used in the plaster for the walls and ceilings, creating a sense of continuity. Accents are in natural woods. Icicle is developed in China with international potential, and Carven is known in the West with China potential Isabelle Capron, Icicl executive The fourth floor is dedicated to culture rather than clothes. The long room along the front of the building hosts exhibitions and book launches, and is lined with floor-to-ceiling walnut shelving that holds books for sale. The collection of nearly 500 titles originated in ways of living or creating according to nature that align with the brand’s philosophy, and also includes numerous titles with links to Chinese culture. In 2018, Icicle acquired the historic French couture house Carven. Founded in 1945 by Marie-Louise Carven, the company had gone into receivership, and the €4.2 million acquisition kept it from liquidation. Icicle relaunched the brand, first in China and then in France. There are now seven Carven stores in China. “It is really the combination of two brands, two cultures, two markets,” says Capron in the fourth floor of the George V flagship. They “are very complementary geographically, because Icicle is developed in China with international potential, and Carven is known in the West with China potential”. Compared with Icicle’s more minimal style, Carven’s is lively and colourful, with plenty of paisleys. Last year, Icicle created the ICCF Group (Icicle Carven China France). The group’s logo intertwines the initials of the two brands. Set in a square, the letters evoke two keys. “By working together, with different cultures, different ways of thinking,” says Capron, “we can do something new.” While it took six years to realise the first Icicle store in Paris, other outposts have come in accelerated fashion, and in increasingly upscale and prominent locations. Last October, Icicle opened a boutique in the Haussmann branch of Galeries Lafayette. Located on the first floor among other luxury designers, the narrow space sits beside Valentino and faces Balmain. In January, Icicle added another in Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche. Both are highly visible retail outlets in two of Europe’s most celebrated department stores. And then, a month later, the doors opened to its newest shop, on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. What can the West learn from China’s luxury e-commerce revolution? In all four Paris locations, its new leather shoulder “seed bags” are prominently displayed. Launched with the spring/summer 2022 collection, they are ingeniously sewn from a single piece of leather and made in a shape taken directly from nature. Krzysztof Lukasik, originally from Warsaw, Poland, and educated in Switzerland and France, is head designer of accessories at Icicle. For him, a single piece of leather meant a number of advantages. “There are really few scrap fabrics,” he explained in a short video when the bags were launched. “The making of this simple shape requires little handling efforts and low energy consumption. And [with] this low consumption of material and manipulation, we obtain an eco-conceived object.” The requirement of less water, energy and even manual labour all match the Icicle ethos. It also makes the product relatively good value. While Icicle sells cashmere beanies for €290 and bucket hats for €250, the three sizes of leather shoulder seed bags are priced at €250 (mini), €450 (small) and €590 (medium). Today, sustainability is one of the most important buzzwords in the fashion industry, with virtually every major brand putting out sustainable collections. (As The New York Times’ fashion critic Vanessa Friedman tweeted recently, “Happy Earth Day. Or, as it now seems, ‘Marketing our Sustainability Initiatives Day’.”) Icicle “was born as an eco-brand”, says Capron. “Very few brands can say that.” China matters to luxury brands – CEOs tell us why Examples such as this recall how the “Made in China” issue isn’t necessarily about quality but rather about perception, marketing and branding. Shang Xia and Icicle are two companies changing what Made in China means, but as high-end fashion brands relatively new to the international scene, they face a unique hurdle. Most luxury sales are to first-time buyers, and first-time buyers usually buy legacy brands. People generally don’t spend years dreaming of that Hermès Birkin bag, Burberry trench coat or piece of Louis Vuitton luggage to then spend the same amount on a similar item by an up-and-coming label. As Shang Xia and Icicle expand into the world in different ways, both agree that it will take time and patience. “Big brands,” says Li, “are not built in a day.” In 2020, on the 10th anniversary of Shang Xia’s launch, Jiang told Women’s Wear Daily, “A real luxury brand is not about getting rich. It requires a lot of time. It’s like architecture: if you want to build a skyscraper, you need to dig a foundation that is almost as deep.” It took Shang Xia a decade to build the foundation of its brand, “now we are ready to grow the brand; we need to widen it in terms of reputation and notoriety”. Hiring a maverick designer like Li was an important step in fulfilling that goal. “It is a really exciting time,” Li says. “In the next 10 years, there will be five Shang Xias. We really hope that. Because you need a movement, you can’t be just one. French fashion history is not based on one brand.” For Li, the mission to make China a creative force goes beyond fashion, though. “We want to take our audience and fellow creatives also with us.” While Paris remains the world fashion capital and success there sends a strong message, for Shang Xia and Icicle, the City of Light is a stop along a winding road that is yet to be charted. “The goal is clear,” says Li, “but the path is definitely not linear.”

The global names in luxury fashion aren’t Chinese. Two brands, Shang Xia and Icicle, could change that

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} China has long failed to take a seat at the top table of luxury brands, but that could be changing. Pull up a chair, Shang Xia and Icicle

China has long failed to take a seat at the top table of luxury brands, but that could be changing. Pull up a chair, Shang Xia and Icicle