Sign up to receive the Vogue Business newsletter for the latest luxury news and insights, plus exclusive membership discounts.
The opening of Taipei Fashion Week this season had a twist. Rather than models in high fashion, athletes from Taiwan’s Olympics delegation walked the runway wearing sportswear collections that riffed on the colours, symbolism and mythology of the upcoming games in Paris.
It was a play to broaden Taipei’s reach beyond the usual fashion week attendees. The official uniform of the Taiwanese teams — designed by Justin Chou, founder of Just In XX — was displayed during the trade fair adjoining the main show space (a repurposed factory building in Songshan Cultural and Creative Park). Chou collaborated with local craftspeople, including “national treasure” Yen Yu-Ying, a master weaver of banana tree fibre, as well as abstract artist Paul Chiang. A wider Olympics-themed showcase involved Chou and five other brands: C Jean, Jamie Wei Huang, Pces, Story Wear and SYZYGY.
Taipei Fashion Week, founded by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture in 2018, runs biannually during April and October, attracting around 35,000 visitors a year. The initial goal was to “march onto the global scene”, said deputy minister of the Ministry of Culture Sue Wang, at a press conference marking the start of this season (which ran from 24 to 29 April). But she admitted that it has taken time to do this; the pandemic curtailed its expansion plans. “Now, we regard ourselves as a domestic fashion week. Our main market is Asia. But over the years we’ll be learning and struggling to grow into a well-known global fashion week,” she continued.
A handful of Taiwanese designers have cut through the global noise in recent years. Taiwan-based Namesake, founded by three brothers, was shortlisted for the LVMH Prize in 2023, and Taiwanese designer Chiahung Su was shortlisted this year. Founded in 2020, the latter specialises in hand-dyeing, works with indigenous craftspeople and has a store in the Dadaocheng area of the city.
Chou is on a roll. Away from the Olympics celebrations, he hosted a show for Just In XX that was open to the public — a first for Taipei Fashion Week. The collection on show was a capsule designed in collaboration with the Natural History Museum, which saw Chou draw inspiration from Taiwanese art, ceramics and textiles. Silk dresses, woven overcoats and elongated shirts all morphed into wearable artworks.
Taipei Fashion Week is focused on integrating Taiwan’s indigenous cultural touchpoints and craft, said Wang. “In the future, we want to have more [of these types of] collaborations with fashion week and to make sure these IP crossovers have great marketing potential.” Originally earmarked as a commemorative collection to celebrate the museum’s reopening, Chou is now in talks to put it into production following the warm reception (700 guests attended the show).
Local market challenges
One of Taiwan’s budding success stories, Su decided against showing at Taipei Fashion Week, opting instead for a Paris showroom during men’s week in June. The Taiwanese market is “quite tricky”, he explains, “locals put more eyes on international brands. That means showing in Paris to prove yourself and have more awareness back home.”
The LVMH Prize nomination boosted sales in Europe. The brand currently has a staff of eight, and sales of €350,000 per season. It retails through 29 international stockists (such as Leclaireur in Paris and London’s Selfridges), but production capacity remains limited to under 800 SKUs per season given its reliance on artisans.
Experts cite the size of the Taiwanese population as a drawback when compared with neighbouring countries like Korea or Japan (nearly 24 million versus 52 million and 123 million, respectively). Despite being a world-leading textile producer (specialising in functional fabrics for brands such as Nike and Lululemon), a lack of small-scale production is hindering Taiwan’s emerging designers. Chou and C Jean’s founder Chun-Yuan Jean also mention a “close-minded” consumer base.
The retail value of luxury goods in Taiwan grew by 9 per cent in current terms in 2023 to reach €14.4 billion, according to Euromonitor. Chia Wu, associate project director at Taipei Fashion Week, is adamant that the domestic market simply cannot support the industry. “It’s a problem. It’s not big enough and much of it is occupied by international brands that came into the country after Sars; Chanel, Dior, Fendi and so on. They overwhelmed the market and the local designers at that time disappeared. Price is also a factor: fast fashion and cheaper online purchasing aren’t helping in this environment,” Wu says.
Tang Tsung-Chien — a graduate of IFM Paris, who was a finalist of the 34th Festival d’Hyères in 2019 — took a break from showing at Taipei Fashion Week this year. “Although young Taiwanese do have a sense of style and like niche names, I think the issue is that the general public is not very interested in fashion,” he explains. “It’s the same people attending shows and the impact [of fashion week] is quite small. Fashion week is trying to change this.” For him, Su is “the perfect example” of what can be achieved with the aid of global recognition.
Efforts by organisers to cultivate local interest include bringing popular boy bands, celebrities and influencers onto the front row and engaging the younger generation of fans: actress Pauline Lan, singer George Hu, athlete Chiang Hung-Chieh and actress Amanda Chou all attended. Brands are inviting stars, too. Local boyband U:Nus sat on knitwear designer Gioia Pan’s front row. Woolex’s heavily embellished tailoring collection was previewed by three rappers, Gummy, Wannasleep and Mad Neuron. Ally Shn sang during Damur’s heartfelt show that was dedicated to his father.
Shih-Shun ‘Damur’ Huang, who lives in Berlin, founded his brand in 2015 and has three employees, with annual sales of €150,000 to €200,000. Models wore separates, there were chequered prints, striking scalloped edges, and ruching details on outerwear. “We are a small country and I don’t think the European market knows much about us from a design perspective, even though we are well known in Asia. We [Taiwan] are more well known for big tech or corporations,” Huang said after his show. One of the few brands based abroad, he designs in Berlin but produces in Poland and Taipei.
Taipei Fashion Week officially hosted 20 international guests this season, including press and buyers from France, Germany, Italy and the UK as well as China, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia — around half of those in attendance last October (spring/summer tends to perform better due to the warmer weather). Simeon Dimitrov, owner of Berlin’s Superconscious store, was attending for the second time. Superconscious stocks niche brands like Aries Arise and P.A.M. “Autumn was bigger, with more shows and more happening — but that’s to be expected given the weather,” he says.
Just In XX’s Natural History Museum collab was a standout for Dimitrov, from the colourful palette to the authenticity of the designs, he says. On the difficulties, he lands on the price point: “It’s very challenging for them to get to the European market. If you compare the prices for a new brand going there with a price point for the well-known brands, I think they will need to compromise to be more attractive to consumers.” If brands are open to it, he suggests third-party consignment as a solution.
Given the limitations of the domestic industry for local designers, Taipei Fashion Week has few options but to look outward — whether that’s east or westward. “[If] Taiwanese designers only focus on the local market, they will be limited by the market scale. This is the reason why they must go global,” says Florence Lu, fashion curator and academic.
Still, Lu says there are reasons to be optimistic about Taiwanese fashion’s future. “I think if we could narrow the gap between these large factories and the designer brands, and make more collaboration happen like we’ve seen at Taipei Fashion Week, then the industry can create more opportunities and possibilities.”
Vogue Business shares parent company Condé Nast with Taipei Fashion Week media partner Vogue Taiwan.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
Meet Jacques Wei, the Chinese designer with global potential
