Mark Gong can remember the exact time and date when he found out that Jennie from Blackpink had been photographed in his now-famous dog print T-shirt: “It was February 24, 2025 — 3pm. That was crazy, I was freaking out.”
Anticipating a spike in demand for the cotton tee, which features six dachshunds wearing pearl necklaces, the team called up their supplier and ordered an extra 500 units. By the time the designer had returned from a barbershop appointment that same day, all pre-orders had been filled. “I was like, OK, let’s go big, let’s try 2,000,” he recalls. So, 30,000 dog T-shirt sales later, the 28-year-old designer’s business is buoyant and looking to build on the momentum.
The eponymous label — stylized as Markgong — currently employs around 17 full-time staff and six freelancers, who work across everything from pattern-cutting and embroidery to supply chain management and finance. “If you’re a designer here in China, you’re not just a designer, you’re a business person,” he says. “You have to be a boss.”
Speaking on the eve of his Spring/Summer 2027 show at Shanghai Fashion Week, which will mark the brand’s 10th physical runway moment, the womenswear designer has a busy night ahead — “We’re probably going to be up until 6am.” Still, he manages to squeeze in some time to walk me through his plans for the future.
The Gong Girl effect
Gong, who is 28 and studied at New York’s Parsons School of Design, is part of the emerging cohort of Shanghai-based designers who studied abroad before building serious businesses back home. After graduating, Gong established the brand in New York in 2018, before relocating the business to his native China during the Covid pandemic in 2020.
In August, the designer opened his first flagship store in Shanghai’s IAMP Mall, as well as an online storefront via Alibaba-owned retail platform Tmall. Annual revenue for the business as a whole currently sits around the $1 million mark, according to Gong, with direct-to-consumer making up around 60-70% of sales. (Gong notes that online sales figures are hard to pin down thanks to China’s notoriously high return rates, which can reach up to 70%.) T-shirts alone account for around 35% of the business.
Mark Gong opened his first flagship store in Shanghai’s IAMP Mall.
Photo: Courtesy of Mark Gong
