Shiatzy Chen: the ‘Chanel of China’ showing at Paris Fashion Week
Paris Fashion Week has long been about the classics, but there is an emerging fashion alliance between East and West that is bringing a new perspective and energy discovers Fleur Britten
Think of Paris Fashion Week, and most likely it’s Dior, Chanel, YSL and similar brands that come to mind – those historic French houses with ateliers and les petites mains (their highly skilled seamstresses), and a long tradition of craftsmanship. But there’s a new guard in town – an influx of Chinese and Taiwanese high-fashion brands who are showing in Paris this season, and they have more in common with France’s heritage brands than you might think.
First on the scene was the so-called “Chanel of China” – the fashion label Shiatzy Chen, the first Taiwanese designer to land a place on Paris’s official schedule (2008), and the country’s first member of French fashion’s governing body, the Federation de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (FHCM), in 2009.
Its front row this year was a hot ticket. Oscar-winning Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh and Chinese It-boy Liu Yu led the celebrity phalanx that descended upon Paris’s dramatic Art-Deco Palais de Tokyo for its S/S24 catwalk collection. They were joined by hundreds of black-clad fashion editors as well as the sunglasses-indoors street-style crew, all cooling themselves off with Shiatzy Chen white paper fans, as models glided through the vast curved hall in exquisite caped cheongsams and monochrome tulle-hemmed dresses.
Past “frows” have included Kendall Jenner, Karlie Kloss, Eva Longoria, Jessica Alba, Miranda Kerr and others, but surely Shiatzy Chen’s other significant celebrity name-drop has to be that Samantha Cam was once the brand’s PR. Despite all this apparent fashion razzle-dazzle, peacocking is not core to the vision of 70-year-old founder Wang Chen Tsai-Hsia. Instead she is, the fashion journalist Suzy Menkes tells me, “someone who believes in quiet luxury, which surely must come from her original life in her native country”.
“It is a myth to believe that people with money spend it all, have a show-off personality and want to draw attention to themselves. Shiatzy Chen is an example of someone who makes clothes that whisper rather than shout.”
This season, restrained elegance was as ever in evidence, with a seadragon-themed collection (2024 is the year of the dragon), embroidered onto evening pieces and designed by the Paris-based Brazilian artist Daniela Busarello, who had also created a huge conceptual dragon installation for the show that the models had to walk around. Traditional Chinese styles – the mandarin collar, the mamian skirt, the diagonal lines of the cheongsam and so on – were updated with tassels, sparkles, sporty jackets and short shorts and the use of hemp fabric from a French farm, because, says Wang: “We need to be environmentally aware."
The show closed with Madame Wang taking her bow on the catwalk to the song “French Lessons” (appropriately enough), by Kelsey Lu and Mykki Blanco, dressed in a black sleeveless shirt dress from undone so that you could see her glossy black leather shorts underneath, teamed with a pair of dazzlingly white and silver platform trainers.
The collection epitomised what Wang says is the essence of the brand – East meets West, or more accurately, Taiwan meets Paris. Indeed, according to Didier Grumbach, former president of FHCM, Shiatzy Chen is “the nearest in spirit to our French luxury brands”; he praises Wang’s “respect for tradition” and “insistence on handcrafted works and high-quality craftsmanship”. Shiatzy Chen’s clothes are “not for daily wear”, says her PR, but for special occasions and c-suites, and have a “very high price point” – an embroidered cardigan costs $1,700 (£1,400). It’s very on-message with French luxury.
It all chimes with the trend for stealth wealth where quality, craftsmanship and attention to detail are valued above showy ostentation, which by contrast all seems a bit “nouv”. This Succession-style quiet luxury over Kardashian-style attention-seeking. Growing up in Changhua, Wang learnt her skills, when, as the eldest daughter of seven children, she dropped out of high school in order to support the family, apprenticing at her uncle’s tailoring shop. Showing an early talent for embroidery and craftsmanship, she quickly acquired a group of loyal customers, and in 1978, with her textile-broker husband, Wang launched Shiatzy Chen, with traditional Chinese embroidery at its heart.
The couple also noticed that their consumers were “obsessed” with foreign brands, so she looked West, and, in 1990, set up a studio in France in order “to learn the good cutting skills from Paris”. Wang now spends at least two months a year there, always using a Parisian cutter for the collections, and “taking inspiration from the streets”; the embroidery, meanwhile, is done by hand in Shanghai and Taiwan. “Shiatzy Chen represents Chinese culture,” says Wang, “but we need to take the good things from Western culture to fit the modern woman. The qipao [cheongsam] doesn’t make people feel comfortable.”
With some 67 stores in Asia, and one in Paris, in Avenue Montaigne, open since 2017, Shiatzy Chen’s client base is clearly weighted eastwards. But her Parisian presence is part of a wider push by a new fashion alliance.
“It’s not East meets West, it’s West meets East,” explains the Paris-based American fashion journalist and podcaster Dana Thomas. “The global market has been shifting eastwards for about 20 years, with [Western] luxury brands selling in Asia. ”But now the market has matured enough that they are offering their own brands.”
Thanks to the support of the FHCM and the Institut Francais de la Mode, “they’ve built up a whole fashion curriculum in China with the aim of creating luxury fashion brands that could sell all over the world – now we’re seeing the results.”
Fashion labels such as Shiatzy Chen, Ruohan Nie, Caroline Hu and Rui are bringing a welcome new energy, she adds: “Rather than the usual suspects making clothes for a European jet set who winter in Gstaad, there’s now a new energy and a different point of view coming to Paris Fashion Week. This new wave is so refreshing.”
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