These Are the Brands Coming Out of China You Need To Know

At this season’s edition of Pitti Uomo, 1,220 brands set up shop across 60,000 square meters in Florence’s Fortezza da Basso. It was enough to overwhelm this first-time visitor, one of 30,000 who attended the menswear trade show famous for showcasing high-profile guest designers (this season included Ferragamo, Givenchy, and S.R. Studio LA. CA.) and attracting peacock-y tailored clothing enthusiasts the world over. But I knew what I was getting into: most of the labels that display their wares at Pitti inhabit the world of haberdashery, and over the course of three days, I touched more blazers than I could count, considered mountains of ties, and saw so many beautiful dress shirts I wanted to cry like Daisy Buchanan.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I entered the dark, cool grotto that housed Pitti’s “Guest Space: China” program, and spotted a silk bowling shirt by Private Policy in a trippy rainbow-gradient checkerboard print. It was so good I wished I was more skilled in the art of shoplifting. At each edition, Pitti hosts a specific country’s emerging fashion designers, and this season the fair collaborated with Shanghai-based fashion incubator Labelhood on selecting the eleven designers who would represent China. Which is quite a bit different than representing, say, Poland. China is the world’s largest luxury goods market, the size of the US, Europe, South America, and Russia combined. It’s the center of global apparel manufacturing. It’s the country every single international brand is hoping to crack. And, as I found, it’s producing some of the most exciting up-and-coming fashion talent on the planet.

Though the designers behind each of the eleven brands hail from China, the national label is actually a bit of a misnomer. Private Policy was founded by Haoran Li and Siying Qu in New York, and has presented two collections at London Fashion Week: Men’s. Standout brand Danshan, which showed a range of sliced and distressed satin shirts, coats, and trousers in soft shades, including a pair of truly memorable deconstructed tuxedo pants, was founded by Central Saint Martins grads Danxia Liu and Shanpeng Huang and is based in London.

But several of the designers, after studying and working abroad, returned to China to establish their own brands. Take Sans Peng, the man behind a pair of absolutely deadly black patent space cowboy boots. Before launching his Shanghai-based footwear brand Untitlab in January, Peng designed shoes for Hugo Boss and Sandro. Untitlab’s block-toed boots, triple-stacked sole lace-ups, and ultra-light, ultra-advanced sneakers were more technically impressive than anything I saw the entire week in Florence, which Peng said is partly thanks to how close he’s able to work with his local producers. “Everybody can help you if you know what you want,” he told me. “It’s quite easy to set up your own brand in China.”

According to Pitti Immagine CEO Raffaello Napoleone, for the past 25 years, China “was just a clothing industry,” as opposed to one that produces capital-F Fashion. We were sitting in his office above the Fortezza; he had just come from lunch with the president of Alibaba, another Chinese retail mega-success story. Napoleone wears the dark suits and gorgeous footwear of an Italian fashion executive—his job is to promote the industry at home and abroad. So he’s been traveling regularly to China since 1988 to try to understand the consumer and manufacturing market. But it’s only in the past three or four years, he told me, that he noticed the rise of a true Chinese fashion industry. “You can produce lots of products,” he said, “but it’s another world when you have to produce fashion. That means with identity, well done, not copied.” He was so impressed with one brand in particular, Pronounce, that it was invited to be the first Chinese brand to ever stage a runway show at Pitti Uomo.

Of all the Chinese designers at Pitti, Pronounce was the most unabashed about embracing its national identity. The brand was established in 2016 by Yushan Li and Jun Zhou, who met in London as students. Li worked at Yeezy after graduating from CSM, while Zhou picked up experience at Ermenegildo Zegna. At first, Li and Zhou set up their studio in Milan, but decided they needed to have a presence in Shanghai. “We find that in our generation, people prefer to stay foreign, not local. To kind of escape,” said Li. “But we feel in this generation we need to have the local voice. To build up the conversation with local people and to change the industry.”

Their Spring-Summer 2020 show, titled “A Fresh Dig,” was inspired by one of China’s enduring national symbols, the Terracotta Warriors, whose visages were printed on clingy jersey undershirts and inside-out overcoats worn by a cast of mostly Western models. A collaborative Jack Purcell sneaker was caked in mud, like it had been unearthed in an archeological dig. Can Mao jackets be sexy? Pronounce’s mesh-paneled versions answered that question with a resounding yes. A few pieces offered more subtle references to their homeland. A beautiful vest looked at first glance like it was made of tan nylon; upon closer inspection it was woven out of bamboo beads, a sort of statement of purpose for Li and Zhou, who are determined to represent China on the global fashion stage. “Nobody’s using bamboo,” Li pointed out the next day.

It helps that the perception around “Made In China” tags has been turned on its head. “In the beginning,” Li said, “from our first season of doing a showroom in Paris, people thought ‘made in China’ is a bad thing. A lot of buyers would pass by and ask, Where do you produce? We would say China, and feel quite obviously most of the people would kind of like, you know…” Li trailed off. “But we feel a huge difference already after three years.” Even Napoleone readily admits as much. “I defend of course made in Italy, by definition, but we have to accept the fact that the market now is global,” he told me, holding up his iPhone. “Do you know where this phone is produced? We are not going to buy Nokia, or Motorola, which used to be produced in Europe. They don’t exist anymore. This is the truth.” The Pronounce designers said they considered making their clothes in Italy, “but we didn’t want to!” said Li. They would rather train the local factories and tailors they work with in the advanced clothesmaking techniques they picked up in Europe. “We are fucking Chinese,” Li said, laughing. “We need to do this.”

It’s easy to imagine Danshan’s slinky shirts alongside Pronounce’s printed tailoring in the window of Barneys or Opening Ceremony. Hell, Untitlab might be the best-kept secret in boots right now, and I’m half a mind to fly to Shanghai to buy a pair. But from where he sat, Napoleone was wary of predicting a full-blown China moment. “For them to sell here will be not easy,” he said. “The market is not like it used to be when Versace or Armani started.” There is, for one, the literal internet, the home of platforms like Farfetch that bring far-flung brands a click away, and the force that has made breaking through in the modern fashion system that much more difficult. There’s also the sheer scale of Chinese brands’s home market. “How do they handle their own market, [not to mention] the European and American market?” Napoleone pointed out. Talking to Li and Zhou, it’s clear they’ve got their work cut out for them—but they’re plenty ready. “To be honest we don’t feel there is real fashion in China,” Li said. “There’s a lot of clothes. But it’s not fashion. And it’s not amazing stuff or the authentic thing. But we have the ability to do that.”

Originally Appeared on GQ