Last week, former Marni creative director Francesco Risso was appointed creative director of casual wear brand GU, which is owned by Uniqlo’s Japanese parent company Fast Retailing. Risso will also design a collaboration line with Uniqlo. It’s the latest in a stream of exchanges between Western designers at East Asian fashion companies, and a sign that the industry’s centre of gravity is no longer anchored solely in Europe.
In October, Kim Jones was appointed creative director of a newly launched sub-brand, Areal, within China’s Bosideng — a megabrand known for its down jackets. In September, Kris Van Assche (former creative director of Berluti and artistic director of Dior Homme) collaborated with Chinese sportswear giant Anta on its new line Antazero. In January 2025, British designer Daniel Fletcher joined Chinese label Mithridate as creative director. In September 2024, Clare Waight Keller was named global creative director of Uniqlo.
What’s going on? It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that the motivation for joining an East Asian company is a fat paycheck. But when I asked my Shanghai-based colleague Yiling Pan, editorial director of Vogue Business in China, for her take, she said the forces at play are far more structural.
“In Europe and the US, creative directors are operating in highly financialized systems with shrinking authority, short tenures, and intense pressure for constant buzz,” she says. “By contrast, many East Asian groups — particularly in China and Japan — are still in a brand-building phase and are willing to offer designers broader creative remit, longer horizons, and greater authorship.” On top of that, there’s often stronger supply chain integration and faster time-to-market.
I also reached out to Daniel Fletcher, who echoed Pan’s sentiment. He says he was drawn to the scale of the operation and level of resource available at Mithridate. “The speed and (often overlooked) craftsmanship with which they operate at Mithridate is really impressive, and for a European designer having previously been working on my own label or for smaller brands, being given an atelier with 50 people working full-time was a dream,” he says. “It’s allowed me to focus on design, to develop ideas more, and remove a lot of the challenges I’ve faced previously because of European production issues.”
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Two different playbooks
Asia is not a monolith, and experts stress that Chinese and Japanese fashion companies operate very differently. “Japan is much more advanced in terms of creative direction and brand building than China,” says Sonja Prokopec, professor of luxury brand management at French business school ESSEC, based at its Singapore campus. She points to Bosideng as an example of a manufacturing-led company that is still building its creative identity. “Japan has had a high focus on design for many years and is considered the hub of design and creativity in Asia. Perhaps the reason they’re not at the scale of some European brands comes down to the ability to storytell or a culture that’s less expressive and showy, which can limit international recognition.”
In Japan, work culture is known for being more conservative and risk-averse — but also more creatively led. “Designers in Japanese companies are less bound by finance, marketing, and operations, and thus have more freedom to be creative,” says Japanese fashion and retail consultant Loic Bizel.
China, by contrast, is known for dynamic companies that operate at speed. “Chinese fashion companies are often more hierarchical than their Western counterparts, but that doesn’t mean they are less agile,” says Jack Porteous, commercial director at marketing agency Tong Global, which helps global brands reach Chinese consumers. He refers to “China speed”, where new products can go from a sketch or idea to on a digital shelf in a matter of days. “The challenge for Western creatives is often that much of the decision-making happens behind the scenes, rather than through open debate. Many Western brands often trade speed for process transparency — whereas in China, it’s frequently the reverse.”
That raises the question of whether Western designers risk missing the mark with local consumers. “Locally in China, Western designers can find success so long as they can curate collections which match the lived reality of today’s Chinese consumer,” says Porteous. “Working with their new teams to develop a deep understanding of their target audience is crucial — and done successfully should create space for creativity and external aesthetic inspiration to attract today’s culturally confident, discerning Chinese consumer.”
Fletcher — who splits his time between London and Guangzhou — says he’s enjoying learning more about Chinese culture. “I think going into it, you need to have a really open mind and remind yourself that you’ve probably been brought up both personally and professionally in a totally different way, so things aren’t going to be the same as they would working in a brand in the country you were born in,” he says. “I’m still learning new things about Chinese cultural practice all the time, and I’m a year into my role now. I don’t see that changing, but that’s part of the fun of the job now.”
Competing with Europe
For East Asian fashion companies, the upside of hiring Western designers goes beyond name recognition. Experts note that Japanese companies, in particular, benefit from injecting disruption and creative tension to support premiumisation efforts. For Chinese brands, motivations range from improving product creativity to supporting ambitions for international expansion.
But the real value proposition is more systemic, according to Pan. “Chinese and Japanese groups are effectively buying operating systems: global design processes, collection architecture, runway-to-retail logic, and international media fluency,” she says. “Western designers bring institutional knowledge that accelerates brand maturity and helps local companies become globally legible without simply copying European luxury models. This is about translation and capability-building, not Westernization.”
Taken together, experts describe less a simple talent grab than a broader rebalancing of creative and commercial power. Production, consumer growth, and increasingly, brand leadership are anchored in Asia — and designers are aligning their careers accordingly.
At the same time, interest is flowing in the opposite direction. Bizel notes that Western luxury groups are looking to Asian designers: Nigo at Kenzo, Hun Kim at Karl Lagerfeld, Derek Lam at Callas Milano, and even the LVMH Prize being awarded to Japanese designer Soshi Otsuki in 2025. “More brands are opening Asian design hubs in Japan, Korea and China to be closer to fast-moving trends,” Bizel says. “These creative centres often have more freedom and follow fewer rigid codes than in Europe, where fashion is more conservative and anchored in heritage.”
Still, most experts stop short of calling it a full-scale power handover. “Europe still holds much of the symbolic authority in luxury. What’s changing is that Asian companies are no longer willing to follow that authority uncritically,” says Porteous.
Beyond East Asia, other markets are also beginning to attract global attention. Prokopec points to India, where deep craft traditions and manufacturing capabilities are increasingly gaining Western acknowledgement. “What will play a big role is how these brands are perceived if they’re made in China or India,” she says, referencing outdated assumptions outside Asia.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s going to be a complete swap in power between the East and West,” she continues. “But there will be much more growth. Europe has executed luxury very well for many years, but recent price increases and declining cultural relevance have created pushback. That shift is opening the door for consumers to look elsewhere, and I think there’s going to be a lot more interest in brands coming from throughout Asia.”
