HK puts new spin on its garments - Hong Kong

Business Asia, May 31, 1999

Gone are the days when Hong Kong's garment industry merely turned out cheap imitations of overseas clothing.

Hong Kong designers have built a world-wide reputation for innovative design in the past two decades -- and the Special Administrative Region is now targeting Australian consumers of high fashion.

Leading the push is the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, which in a historic first introduced its designers to Australian Fashion Week this month. It was the first group display by Asian designers at the Australian exhibition.

Six of Hong Kong's best -- William Chan, Barney Cheung, Lu Lu Cheung, Benjamin Lau and Pacino Wan -- participated in Fashion Week. Leading models, including world-renowned QiQi, also took part.

Mr Alan Wong, the director of services promotion for the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, said "fashion is business" in the Special Administrative Region.

Decades ago, Hong Kong factories reproduced labels and designs for American and European markets and "developed a taste for what the market wanted".

"However, we still were not revealing Hong Kong's identity. From the '80s on, our designers have come of age," Mr Wong said.

A proliferation of fashion training schools and emphasis on the development of individual Hong Kong labels has seen fashion successes in South East Asia, Europe and the US.

Increasingly, Hong Kong fashion is expanding outside the confines of Asia.

"It's really horizontal now in the sense that we are not really putting all our designers' collections into South East Asia. Those markets are still important, but markets in Europe, America and now Australia are becoming very important for us," Mr Wong said.

"Of course, these markets are very demanding because we are really faced with all of the world's best designers, so it will take time to nurture this development. But we are very glad to see some of our people achieve great success."