Shanghai hands its closing night to TikTok's parent
Photo: SHUSHU/TONG 27SS Look 16
Shanghai Fashion Week closes with a runway staged by Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, carrying 45 emerging local designers, a day after Shushu/Tong ends the ready-to-wear schedule.
The spring 2027 season has run since 8 October from the Xintiandi main venue, WWD reported when the official calendar was published, with adidas, H&M and Sanrio's Kuromi also hosting events across the week.
Shanghai Fashion Week is a business and cultural event hosted by the Shanghai Municipal Government, organised by Shanghai Textile Group under the Ministry of Commerce. Its closing slot this season belongs to a short-video platform.
Douyin stages the season finale with 45 emerging designers. Shushu/Tong closes the ready-to-wear schedule.
That makes three state-backed Asian fashion weeks in two months to hand their most valuable real estate to something other than buyers.
Seoul wired the clothes on its Jamsil runway into Lotte Department Store's online mall in September, then reported $7.57m in order consultations from its trade show, up 0.4% on the previous season, with overseas buyers from 20 countries against 23 a year earlier.
Tokyo gave no Grand Prix at all in its emerging-designer award, with the Japan Fashion Week Organization saying its finalists lacked the financial strength to keep showing.
Three cities, three different answers to the same problem, and in each case the answer involves a commercial partner doing what the fashion week could not.
The case for Shanghai's version is the strongest of the three. Forty-five emerging designers getting a platform is more new-talent exposure than most weeks manage, and Douyin reaches the Chinese consumer where discovery actually happens rather than where a buyer's appointment happens.
Shanghai has also never pretended to be Paris. The week was built as a trade and industry platform from the start, and a finale aimed at domestic consumers is consistent with that rather than a retreat from something.
The established names did show. Pronounce made its womenswear runway debut, with Shuting Qiu, Staffonly, Comme Moi and Short Sentence all returning to Xintiandi, and Chen Sifan coming back to the runway after a rebrand.
Shushu/Tong, which Liushu Lei and Yutong Jiang founded in Shanghai in 2015, took the final ready-to-wear slot, staged by Labelhood. The label was not on the Paris calendar this season, where Zutter counted five Chinese houses and one runway show.
Among the labels making their Xintiandi runway debut this week was Jendes, founded by the Taiwanese-Australian actor and model Hannah Quinlivan.
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