Chinese fashion design: Rebuilding the centre of the world.

Tim Lindgren

Queensland University of Technology,

Brisbane, Australia.

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Chinese fashion design: Rebuilding the centre of theworld.

******

In this paper I contend that by emphasising the

economic flows of fashion instead of the aesthetic field,

an alternate view of the fashion system emerges. Fashion

is fundamentally a consumer activity, made acutely

manifest in liquid modernity (Bauman 2011, 18-31),

consequently new centres of fashion will gravitate toward

sites of greater financial activity, in turn

contradicting the cultural supremacy of traditional

fashion capitals. In this way fashion is cast as a

commodity and measured in dollar terms.

Therefore I argue the concept of Eurocentric

hegemony, once represented as industrial might has become

a mythological concept perpetuated by multinational

corporations traditionally headquartered in Europe who

manipulate their cultural heritage for profit. While for

these foreign entities there may be degrees of fluidity

to the international deployment of their brands, the

Tim Lindgren Chinese fashion Designers: Rebuilding the Centre of the World

1

certainty of profit margins is paramount to their

corporate bottom line. Consequently the hollowing of

European markets and a greater urgency for increased

revenues from the developing economies of the Asian

marketplace has meant a strategic focus on the emergent

Chinese consumer, and an encroachment upon the territory

of the domestic Chinese designer.

However the speed of digital and social media allows

Chinese producers and consumers alike to respond quickly.

Consequently the exotic, once appropriated from foreign

countries for fresh contexts is no longer new, nor

exclusive. An urgent economic undercurrent has replaced

the allure of orientalism. In the past profits were

repatriated to Europe yet increasingly financial capital

flows in the opposite direction to Asia for the benefit

of Asian investors. In this way, China’s reputation as

manufacturer to the world has been reshaped by a

political mandate that underpins a new creative and

financial impetus in order to challenge established

models, and to offer China as an alternative and future

powerhouse of global fashion.

******

Keywords: Fashion system, China, Digital, Economy

The Eurocentric fashion system offers a model for the

dissemination of fashion that has successfully


2

perpetuated the mythology of Paris as a global fashion

capital, and whose products have been embraced by rapidly

growing numbers of Chinese consumers. However, the

pillars of authenticity that for foreign brands extend

far into their cultural and creative histories, often for

tens of decades in the case of the European luxury brands

of Louis Vuitton, Burberry or Christian Dior, do not

exist in China in this era of globalisation. Here the

cultural bedrock allows these same pillars to extend only

thirty or so years into the past, to the moments when

Deng Xiaoping granted China’s creative entrepreneurs

passage, and therefore Chinese fashion designers have had

less time to assemble their brands and reputations.

Yet this is changing. The momentum of Chinese

fashion is now at a tipping point. At policy level the

Chinese government’s most recent, 12th Five Year Plan,

implemented in 2011, clearly articulates a renewed focus

on the domestic economy. The plan intends to move China’s

economic momentum from an export-led income to domestic-

led consumption. Furthermore, the plan stresses less

reliance on foreign technology, and greater importance

for domestic innovation. Point eight of the ten-point

plan specifically encourages cultural production in order

to increase China’s ‘soft power’ (Chabot 2009).

To examine how this might change the accepted model

of a fashion system, and how such change can be linked to

the economy of a country, this paper adopts a production

of culture approach. Yuniya Kawamura (2005, 33) has


3

explained this cultural perspective is useful for

investigating movements in popular culture where

production is foremost. Furthermore, fashion systems are

constructed of individuals, organisations and

institutions that in combination serve to validate

cultural products. Kawamura’s perspective asserts that

the production of culture involves social cooperation,

collective activities and groups, which is made manifest

as a fashion system. Therefore, in contrast to the view

that fashion emerges in mysterious ways that epitomise

cultural trends, it is clear that fashion emerges from

sets of interacting organisations that shape its content

in various ways (Crane 1997; Kawamura 2011). Underpinning

the malleability of fashion and its movement through a

fashion system is the economy of fashion.

Here I introduce a concept analogous with fashion,

for the narrative that unfolds throughout this paper is

less concerned with the aesthetics of product design and

the beauty of fashion, than it is with the financial

drivers that underpin the field of fashion. The field of

fashion, in the view of economist Paul Nystrom (1928), is

driven by financial capital. There are various other

capitals that contribute to this field, including social

capital and knowledge capital that provide access and

momentum to the dissemination of new ideas. However the

cycling of financial capital through the value-adding

process of manufacturing and legitimisation is

fundamental for the existence of fashion. Therefore, the


4

concept of fashion might be imagined as the energy in the

bow-wave one views when peering over the front of a ship

as it moves through a sea. Fashion is always

incrementally ahead of the financial momentum that

propels it. In this context, the ship is the economy of

fashion and the ocean represents the vastness of the

market for fashion. Of course, when the ship stops

moving, perhaps when it docks, so does the economy of

fashion, so there is a constant quest for new

territories.

In the main, large corporations operating in the

global field of fashion are attentive to factors that

might indicate surplus income for the purchase of luxury

goods (Remy et al. 2014). Growing populations of

middleclass consumers that signify increasing incomes in

new markets, and the capacity to impart or adapt the

mythologised story of their brand are vital for

perpetuating consumption. In the global economy these

indicators are in flux, and an examination of their state

offers a glimpse of what might be termed the new global

economy of fashion, where some brands have become

ubiquitous and currency fluctuations are of vital concern

to the profitability of a corporation. Without these key

indicators, the financial return demanded by investors or

shareholders cannot be ratified, for in this instance

fashion is less an aesthetic phenomenon than it is a most

visible sign of consumption. Large corporations also wish

to invest for the future with an ideal consistency of


5

return (Remy et al. 2014). Despite the ephemeral nature

of fashion and the short shelf life of fashionable

products, physical infrastructure such as retail stores,

warehouses and services including logistics systems and

marketing is of great cost and must be considered for the

long-term.

The term ‘doughnut effect’1 has previously been used

to describe ways in which a city centre hollows as its

human population moves from inner locales to outer

precincts in search of newer, larger or more accessible

housing (Boyle 1992). In particular, the term is used to

describe the migration of shoppers from town centres to

outer suburbs of urban settlement. In the financial

districts of large cities such as London, New York or

Sydney, empty city centres on the weekend provide

evidence of this effect. Here, I utilise the term

differently. Relocated to the context of the fashion

system, the concept is applicable to the changes to the

direction of financial capital in its relocation toward

new geographic territories in quest of untapped or

emerging consumer markets. This ‘hollowing’ of existing

markets for fashion can be attributed variously to

satiated consumers as well as the ease of transmission of

knowledge, best represented by the digital medium,

factors that demonstrate how the exclusivity of fashion

is no longer geographically bound. The world economy has

flattened and along with declining or aging populations,

1 ‘donut’ depending on the geographical location.


6

it is mainly the macro-economic impact of a depressed

Eurozone that has contributed to this effect (Roubini

2014).

In many countries in Europe, economic growth has

stalled, yet conversely most Asian countries possess

economies that are growing consistently. The poor

economic situation is urgent enough for the managing

director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine

Lagarde, to be queried at a recent meeting of the IMF

whether ‘Europe is the new Japan’? Her answer, though

guarded, confirmed the difficult financial circumstances

of the Eurozone (Elliot 2014). When the markers of

population growth, GDP and income are used, the situation

becomes more apparent, and the likelihood of continued

infrastructure investment by large fashion companies

lessens. For instance, the British economy is at risk of

stagnation if its major trading partners in Europe and

elsewhere fall into a recession. Its population though

growing is also aging more quickly (Arnett 2013). In

France, the economy is at a standstill with growth

predictions of 0.4 percent for 2014 and one percent in

2015, although the credit ratings agency Standard and

Poor point to a recovering competitiveness and

profitability among French companies (Boren 2014).

Germany is struggling on the brink of recession due to

poor GDP figures and its centrality in the Eurozone, the

world’s second-biggest economic sector. The impact of

Europe’s plunge in fertility rates over the last few


7

decades is most evident in Germany and in its most recent

census Germany found it had shrunk by 1.5 million people.

The Russian economy is also stagnant where GDP

growth in 2014 hovers at 0.8 percent. Russia is operating

on the threshold of recession due to increased

geopolitical risk, limited access to financial markets

and trade sanctions as widely reported in the world media

recently (The World Bank 2014). Russia also has reason

for concern about its birth rate in the future as life

expectancy is growing. According to a recent report

(Adomanis 2014), Russia seems likely to rely on migration

to maintain its population like many developed Western

countries, none of which have a total fertility rate

sufficient for population growth.

Other European countries such as Italy, Spain and

Greece need to do more to encourage companies in the

creative sector to invest and create jobs in their

domestic economies. Unemployment is high in Italy at

around twelve percent and especially for young people at

approximately forty-four percent severely curbing their

ability to take advantage of lower borrowing costs to

build businesses. Importantly this demographic is a prime

consumer of fast fashion. Historically high unemployment

rates in countries like Italy, Spain and Greece are

further discouraging young people from having children.

Italy is currently in recession with forecast growth of

0.6 percent in 2015, and a seeming inability by the Prime

Minister Matteo Renzi to reform a political system in


8

desperate need of institutional change. Since the

Eurozone was formed in 1999, Italy has enjoyed almost no

growth, due in part to heady competition from emerging

markets for the country’s manufacturing sector.

For instance, Germany produces highly technical,

complex consumer hardware and machinery, yet Italy has

long specialised in low specification consumer goods,

especially fashion goods, which China and other

production focussed economies have learnt to produce more

cheaply (Bootle 2014). In China, Shanghai’s high speed

Maglev train is a triumphant export of German engineering

as is the Chinese garment industry’s ability to dominate

the manufacturing of much of the worlds clothing.

Spain’s largely agricultural economy is tied to its

European trading partners and is also losing momentum due

to uncertainty over the future of the would-be

secessionist Catalonia. Succession would cost Spain

twenty percent of its economic output, yet growth is

forecast at 1.2 percent in 2014 and 1.6 percent in 2015,

according to the OECD, mainly due to a stabilising

banking sector and greater trust by global financial

markets. However unemployment is another problem. With

24.5 percent of the population unemployed, it is second

only to Greece (Khan 2014).

In Greece, the Eurozone debt crisis that epitomised

the woes of Europe on the global stage and caused near

bankruptcy of the country appears to have stilled. Greece

is forecast to return to a growth scenario after 24


9

quarters (6 years) of negativity, an international

bailout and constant budget deficits. However, the

recession has left more than one in four people

unemployed and reduced household income by a third.

Almost twenty percent of the population is aged 65 or

more, and growth is negative, at -0.5 percent for 2013

(World Bank Group 2014).

The International Monetary Fund’s explains that in

Latin America the latest economic forecasts show

Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina who are the largest

members of the Mercosur Trade Union2, will grow at an

average rate of 0.6 percent this year while Chile, Peru,

Colombia, and Mexico which constitute the Pacific

Alliance will expand by 4.2 percent. The difference has

little to do with western Latin America’s orientation

toward a dynamic Asia or the eastern countries’ exposure

to a stagnant Europe. Replete with abundant natural

resources and a consumer market of almost 200 million

people, Brazil remains a regional economic giant although

the excessively interventionist administration of

President Dilmah Rouseff has caused the country to lose

its title of a dynamic emerging market. Brazilian fashion

sales are substantial, however high duties and import

taxes increasingly push sales online.

Yet the situation is vastly different in Asia. 4.3

billion people live in this region, or sixty percent of

2 The Mercosur trade bloc and customs union comprises Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. Its purpose is to promote free trade and the fluid movement of goods, people and currency.


10

the world's current human population. Asia has enjoyed a

high growth rate since the end of World War Two and

during the 20th century Asia's population almost

quadrupled. While Asia has the second largest GDP of all

continents after Europe, when measured in purchasing

power parity it possesses the largest. The most

substantial economies in Asia are China, Japan, India,

South Korea and Indonesia, with four main financial

centres located in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and

Shanghai.

The Japanese economy is the third largest in the

world in terms of GDP and the fourth largest by

purchasing power parity. It is also the world's second

largest developed economy. According to the International

Monetary Fund, the country's per capita GDP (PPP) was

US$36,899. Japan is a substantial car manufacturer and

has the largest global electronics industry. Facing

increasing competition from China and South Korea,

manufacturing in Japan today now focuses primarily on

high-tech and precision goods, such as optical

instruments, hybrid vehicles, and robotics. Japan

recently suffered its sharpest quarterly contraction

since experiencing the 2011 earthquake disaster, blamed

partially on a new consumer sales tax with another rise

planned for 2015 taking it to ten percent (Whelan 2014).

Yet private, or domestic consumption constitutes

approximately sixty percent of Japan's economic activity

and Japan remains the third largest market for foreign


11

luxury goods after China and the United States. GDP is

forecast at just over 1.3 percent in 2014 and the world’s

third largest economy is showing signs of increasing

atrophy, both in terms of falling economic output and its

shrinking population. More than twenty-two percent of the

Japanese population are 65 or older and a recent report

warned that by 2060 the Japanese population will have

fallen from 127 million to about 87 million, of whom

almost forty percent will be 65 or older (Economist

2014). In contrast, China and South Korea are increasing

their GDP and population at a much faster rate than

Japan.

South Korea is a wealthy nation and a member of the

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

(OECD) as well as belonging to the G-20 major economies.

It has built a market economy that ranks 15th in the

world by nominal GDP and 12th by purchasing power parity

(PPP). While still reliant on exports of mobile handsets,

cars and memory chips for half of its growth, South Korea

is focussed on increasing consumption in the domestic

economy, which grew by three percent last year, up from

two percent in 2012 but lower than double-digit growth

rates experienced in the 1970s. The market for fashion

products is worth €8.3billion, and South Korea is Asia’s

third largest after China and Japan. However, with

domestic consumption mired in a prolonged slump, global

fashion houses note young consumers are turning to more

accessible contemporary brands amid the waning popularity


12

of expensive premium brands such as Gucci and Louis

Vuitton. Japan and Korea produce a similar range of

export products and South Korea has expressed grave

concerns about the aggressive monetary easing of Japan,

which has weakened the Japanese yen and provided Japanese

exports a competitive edge over rival Korean products in

global markets.

When Deng Xiaoping declared the Chinese economy open

in 1978, the Indian infrastructure was comparatively ill

prepared for exposure to the global market. Consequently

in the fields of exports, capital spending and foreign

investment, Indian infrastructure today resembles the

Chinese economy of 2001. Indian economic consolidation

began in 1991 when a foreign-exchange crisis forced the

government based in Delhi to reconcile controls on

exports and imports with an international bailout. India

and China’s paths are noticeably similar. After

liberalisation, exports, foreign investment and spending

on equipment, infrastructure and other capacities for

future growth grew at similar rates in both countries.

India's per capita output in 2013, adjusted for

inflation, was slightly above China's in 2000.

India is also recovering after three years of weak

growth and high inflation. Following a strategy borrowed

from the Chinese, The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

intends to implement special economic zones to attract

foreign investment offering corporate tax benefits and

shortcuts through the maze of Indian bureaucracy, which


13

has hampered the expansion of foreign fashion brands and

made it difficult for domestic brands to compete. In

conjunction, the Trade Minister Nirmala Sitharaman

proposes to emphasise the 'Made in India' brand by

supporting the manufacturing sector, aiming to boost

exports and raise India's share in world trade by fifty

percent over the next five years. India is already a

substantial source of labour intensive beaded and craft

fabrics.

In the meantime, India has become a major hub for

outsourcing due to a large and extremely competitive

information technology industry that emerged in

Bangalore. Call centres, software developers and business

process outsourcing hubs have become major employers in

India due to the availability of large numbers of

skilled, English-speaking staff. Yet Indian literacy lags

China. In terms of the number of years the average adult

has spent in an education institution, India in 2013 was

comparable to China in 1985 and is also decades behind

China when health, sanitation and longevity are measured.

As a result of the global slowdown, China has become

one of the most important markets for European fashion

companies, yet while there is domestic concern of a

property bust, a credit bubble and fallout from efforts

by President Xi Jingping to control corruption, which has

directly impacted domestic consumption of fashion and

luxury goods (Stern 2014), the Chinese domestic economy

is still expanding at a carefully managed rate of


14

approximately 7.5 percent per annum.3 According to the

China National Textile and Apparel Council, the Chinese

textile industry plans to continue to dominate the global

market with a strategy of increasing textile and clothing

exports by 7 percent per annum while also lifting the

export value of fibre products to US$400 billion by 2020

(China Daily 2014).

Simultaneously there has been a substantial refocus

in the Chinese media toward Chinese fashion designers,

and a growing willingness of the countries leaders to

take a place on the world stage. It follows that a strong

domestic fashion system means China’s internal economy

will retain a greater share of the profit margins the

occur from the increased values of Chinese clothing, as

it moves through the value chain. A sign this process may

have already begun occurred in March 2013 when China’s

First Lady, Peng Liyuan, accompanied her husband Xi

Jinping, China’s newly elected President, on their first

state excursion to Russia.4 Instead of wearing a luxury

European fashion brand traditionally favoured by heads of

state, Peng Liyuan specifically wore clothing attributed

to the mid-priced Chinese fashion brand called Exception.

Her careful choice of a non-luxury Chinese fashion label

caused immediate and ongoing speculation in the Chinese

and international press about her reasons for doing so

(The World Bank 2014; Stern 2014; Boyle 1992).

3 This growth rate is forecast to slow to 5 percent in 2017.4 President Xi Jinping was formally elected on March 14th 2013.


15

For many in the Chinese cultural sector, Peng

Liyuan’s choice was seen as politically driven in a new

governmental era where corruption among officials, most

evident in the conspicuous consumption of foreign luxury

fashion brands, has been reframed as a noxious practice

in the new president’s term of office. In fact, President

Xi Jinping has made fighting corruption a top priority,

urging the ruling Communist Party to ‘oppose hedonism and

flamboyant lifestyles’ (Economist 2014). Peng Liyuan’s

sartorial message was equally powerful. It alludes to an

increasing acceptance by elite officials of Chinese

consumer brands, yet this action might also be

interpreted as an oblique directive enabled by the wife

of China’s most powerful official, generated from deep

within the political hierarchy. At the China Foreign

Affairs University, Wang Fan, head of the Institute of

International Relations proclaimed, ‘In her role as first

lady on this visit abroad, Peng Liyuan is exhibiting

China’s soft power,’ (Moore 2013). Furthermore, Zhang Yu,

the editor of Vogue China said, ‘It’s the first time that

China’s first lady appears [sic] like a modern woman…

after so many years, we finally have a first lady who can

represent us so appropriately. I think it is a landmark

event’ (Boren 2014). While time will diminish the

newsworthiness of this event, the attention given to Peng

Liyuan serves best to illustrate the great expectations,

and aspirations of the Chinese creative sector.


16

Much of the globalisation of fashion is now due to

the disruptive nature of digital media. Traditional

gatekeepers such as print magazines like Vogue have

adjusted their strategies, or disappeared, and new

gatekeepers have arisen offering more direct links

between consumers and designers. In fact, Condé Nast, the

European publisher of Vogue magazine, recently laid off

approximately 50 staff members (Telegraph 2014). In a

further sign of change online sales of clothing in Europe

now attract twenty percent of all fashion purchases

(Phillips 2014). However there is greater activity in

China, which has the largest number of Internet users in

a country-to-country comparison. As China moves toward a

greater focus on its domestic economy, the attraction of

creative and cultural goods to aspirational consumers

seems likely to increase. Chinese Internet users are

three-times greater in number than the United States, as

well as India.5 In fact the Chinese Internet population

will reach 730 million in 2016, which is almost double

the population of the United States (Rapoza 2014).

In the context of China it follows that this medium

will directly facilitate consumption in ways that are yet

to be defined, not only internally to the Chinese

domestic economy but also to the Chinese diaspora.

Despite distinct cultural disparities it also follows

that digital models developed for consumers may retain

5 It is telling that the current pace of growth of Internet usage in China is 4% per annum, however Indian Internet usage has increased at14% per annum (W3C 2014).


17

elements of cultural exclusivity. Already the Chinese

governments’ control and manipulation of social media

applications common outside China, such as Twitter and

Facebook has provided fertile ground for domestic

innovation. Many Chinese digital entities are culturally

localised and protected, and replicate the functionality

of successful global platforms, particularly those

selling fashion. In many cases, the intellectual property

did not originate in China. For instance, WeChat (Weixin

in China) is a very popular application among Chinese

consumers. Tencent, the owners of the application have

increased their users from 2.8 million in 2011 to 438

million in 2014 (Statista 2014). However, it is the

uptake of these applications outside China that provides

evidence of the globalisation of Chinese digital

capacities when digital media transverses linguistic and

national borders.

In this instance it is notable that access to

domestic Chinese consumer markets is limited and highly

regulated, yet the use of Chinese digital products and

digital sales mechanisms outside the geographic borders

of China seems unfettered. Entrenched Chinese platforms

such as Alibaba and Tmall with its shopping service

Taobao are in numerous ways able to gate-keep access to

the manufacturing capacity of China, and in this way

maintain the economic inflows that China has become

accustomed to as a manufacturer to the world. However the

value of the outflows, increasingly couched in terms of


18

the rise of Chinese creativity are yet to be made

apparent. For instance, Alibaba’s greatest problem is

trust, particularly in the context of Chinese consumers

wary of fake fashion products, as well as difficulties in

managing the company’s representations to Western brands

eager for access to Chinese consumers, who are

simultaneously becoming increasingly sophisticated. Much

of their rise is due to an increased capacity for travel

as well as more knowledgeable expectations of quality,

consistency and service upon their return to China.

At this nexus, Chinese fashion designers have a

unique opportunity. Digital media offer exceptional and

evolving attributes that enable new methods of

communication, particularly in facilitating mythologised

narratives that would draw upon Chinese culture and place

this in the global context. Some European fashion brands

such as Burberry, Prada and others have become

particularly effective at developing advertising

campaigns that position their products in a new light,

however Burberry is still reliant on Tmall for a portal

to some segments of the Chinese market. Yet in pursuit of

new sales Burberry has also provided Chinese consumers

with content experiences on its website and on various

Chinese social media platforms such as Kaixin001, Douban,

Youku and Weibo as well as through a partnership with

WeChat. In fact the designer for Burberry, Christopher

Bailey extolls the importance of storytelling, describing

Burberry as much a multimedia company as a fashion brand


19

(Harilea 2014). Digital media is not only greatly

enabling to this kind of cultural and creative

production, it amplifies the message to consumers,

reinforcing it by moving beyond the once-measured

traditions of fashion seasons and fashion weeks into

global twilight of fashion blogs, fashion film and social

media available twenty four hours a day. In China the

opportunities offered by this platform would appear to be

underutilised by fashion designers especially those who

are wary of Tmall.

The amount of online time devoted by Chinese

consumers to product and brand self-education is notable.

Ninety per-cent of product-related online activity as

opposed to general browsing on news or entertainment

sites was conducted for the purpose of product education,

and usually did not conclude with an immediate online

purchase (Jap and Walters 2014), yet seventy five percent

of female shoppers have purchased clothing online

(Phillips 2014). However in this space the value of

information is often questionable because of the

malleability of content. Online support by consumers is a

vital step in the process of inspiring trust,

particularly with fashion. It is especially critical in

China, as consumers attribute low levels of trust in

official sources of product information. Consequently it

is the owners or creators of digital creative media

content, like self employed Chinese fashion designers who

will be able to successfully demonstrate new value in the


20

types of information they offer to consumers in a now-

global context, as well as behaving in a trusting and

consistently repetitive manner. In this way a fresh

dialogue between designer and consumer can exist.

In conclusion, when Paul Nystrom (1928, 163) wrote

of the economy of fashion, the chief centres for the

production and consumption of fashion goods were European

cities with the greatest wealth and political influence,

and the fashion system was based upon the mechanised

production of fashionable goods geographically located in

Europe.6 Nystrom included London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna,

Rome, Stockholm, Oslo, The Hague, Brussels and Madrid as

leading fashion capitals. This is no longer the case.

Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai have now assumed

this mantle as sites of finance or production as well as

consumption, and digital media offers a new connectivity

for Chinese fashion designers in ways that have already

begun to reshape the global fashion system.

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6 The sewing machine was invented in 1846, and cutting machines for cloth in 1876 (Nystrom 1928, 397).


21

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World Bank Group. 2014. "Population growth (annual%) Greece": World Bank Group.

Biography

Dr Tim Lindgren is an Australian fashion designer who

works in the global fashion industry where he has

operated his vertically integrated clothing brand. Over

the last ten years, Tim has also pursued his research

interests in Shanghai, and at the A.R.C Centre for

Creative Innovation at the Queensland University of

Technology. Tim is also a cultural studies lecturer. His


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themes include creative entrepreneurship and brand

building in China.


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Date post:	24-Feb-2023
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Chinese fashion design: Rebuilding the centre of the world.

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