When monitoring growth, Chen and Ng are keen to distinguish between revenue potential and profitability. “Significant sales don’t necessarily translate into a healthy business,” says Ng. “The cost of reaching customers, distribution terms, inventory exposure, and the ability to maintain reasonable margins all matter. The question is increasingly not just how much a brand can sell in Asia, but what kind of business it can build here. Does it have a loyal customer base? Can it generate repeat business? Can it operate sustainably without relying on constant expansion?”
Not the new Paris
For designers to build truly global businesses, it’s not enough for them to have brands that are confined to domestic success. Fashion week comes with its own obstacles. The costs of bringing their collections to Paris is increasingly prohibitive for smaller brands, but showing at home is not enough.
Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul have struggled to consistently attract a strong showing of international editors and buyers to their respective fashion weeks. Distance from Europe and the US, language barriers, and rising airfares all play a part. Insiders point to another obstacle: a misalignment in calendars across Asia’s fashion capitals, which can either overlap or show at vastly different times, making a trip to the region for Western professionals less attractive.
“If [they] tried to shift to get their dates closer together, I think it can bring more buyers over,” says Lee. But with political tensions flaring on and off between the countries, it seems unlikely that they will align in the near or medium-term future. “It’s a huge missed opportunity,” says Abbie.
Experts agree that even if Asia will become more globally important in the fashion conversation, framing it as a potential “new Europe” is misguided. “Shanghai doesn’t need to become the new Paris. It needs to become the new Shanghai,” says Pugnetti. “For me, it’s already the center of something, but they need to find their own way to develop the local fashion culture.”
That means building stronger connections between the region’s fashion capitals, but also finding ways for designers to reach more international buyers, press and customers. “Economically, I think the Asian capitals will continue to rise and evolve on the global scene and gain more recognition,” says Siwicki, who adds that his own business is already seeing the benefits from putting more attention on Asia. “De-Westernizing our mindset on fashion has been very enlightening.”
