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On the evening of 30 March, towards the tail end of Shanghai Fashion Week, Tasha Liu hosted an intimate reception to celebrate the opening of Labelhood’s newest store, Labelhood House. The store is its fifth store — third in Shanghai — and will focus specifically on Chinese craft as the platform continues to lay its foundation as China’s foremost homegrown fashion incubator.
In attendance were the many designers that Liu has discovered, mentored, and, in most cases, carries in her stores. Xander Zhou, Yushan Li and Jun Zhou of Pronounce, 2024 LVMH Prize semifinalist Yayi Chen Zhou of Ya Yi, Jacques Wei and Austin Feng of Jacques Wei, Mark Gong — the list goes on. They were there to celebrate Liu and Labelhood and meet with the evening’s guest of honour: Patou CEO Sophie Brocart, the LVMH Prize mentoring director. Liu arranged for Brocart to visit Shanghai and spend her afternoon meeting with designers and advising them.
“They lined up as if they were visiting a wise man or town doctor,” jokes Lv Xiaolei, Shanghai Fashion Week’s secretary general, who is known as Miss Lv in the industry. Every single designer got time with Brocart, and they all received tailored advice.
Such is the kind of happening that Liu has made her mission to facilitate in order to promote Chinese fashion designers and set them up for success. Labelhood is a singular breed of fashion incubator-meets-retailer-meets-fashion week festival. The organisation’s primary mission since its official launch in 2016 is to uplift Chinese design, and it does so through a uniquely set up multi-layered platform.
“I was always curious about how to market fashion brands, and how designers create businesses with their names and become the businesses as well as the human being,” says Liu. “I love fashion, but, I think most importantly, I love people.”
“She is a supporter, a connector, an old friend, and a facilitator for young and upcoming talents,” says Xander Zhou of Liu. “What is really incredible is that, because the industry here is only around 20 years old, Tasha has had an ability to work around the barriers that are in place in other markets,” adds A Magazine editor-in-chief Blake Abbie, who is half Chinese and works with Labelhood, Liu, and many of her designers on a consultancy basis. “She has taken her business background and applied it to an industry that was in its early stages to partner with these brands and find them resources, and then invest in them.”
Labelhood and Liu’s mission is not just to incubate and sell brands but also to export designers’ creativity. Liu is aware of the way in which Chinese design and production are seen around the globe, and the taboo behind the “Made in China” label is secret to no one in the industry. This is why Liu will organise visits like Brocart’s (past visitors also include Lorenzo Hadar, founder of H. Lorenzo and Andreina Longhi of communications agency Attila&Co) and pop-ups abroad. Earlier this year, she organised a Lunar New Year pop-up at Harrods in London, having designers create exclusive products.
“She is the global business card of Chinese fashion,” says Miss Lv.
Fashion East on steroids
Labelhood is, first and foremost, a talent incubator. Like Fashion East in London or what was MADE in New York, it discovers talents and supports their growth, connecting them with one another across the industry — photographers, stylists, producers — to help them with the production of their runway shows or presentations. It will also host a showroom during the week, which brands will participate in for four to six seasons before moving on to Shanghai Fashion Week’s myriad of other options. Labelhood also hosts such goings on, with its fashion week home base set up right in Rockbund, a collection of historic buildings in the former European concession, just a stone’s throw from the Bund waterfront in central Shanghai.
Liu selects the designers Labelhood will promote and support but does not have a checklist of requirements. “Our principle is that we don’t judge them first in terms of potential, but in terms of design value,” Liu says. “If it’s unique enough, and if they are consistent, maybe people don’t buy the first season, but if you keep going, they will show up.”
In addition to offering two show venues to designers in their subsection of the Shanghai Fashion Week calendar and its showroom, which is open to both buyers, media, and the general public, it hosts an arts and culture festival with vendors — from food to skincare — lined up offering their own take on Chinese tradition. Labelhood and the festival will also host exhibitions. This season’s seventeenth Labelhood festival included a brief fashion display to introduce the festival’s theme at large, “Return to Authenticity”, an exhibit of Labelhood designers and their designs in partnership with Disney, and Nike, Bosse and Casetify pop-ups.
There is no other platform in Shanghai for independent designers to find guidance on breaking into the industry. Shanghai Fashion Week, not unlike its global counterparts, is anchored by large commercial brands with bigger budgets. Without Labelhood, emerging independent designers have nowhere else to go during the week.
What makes Labelhood unique is its retail stores: beyond just supporting designers for a 15-minute show, Liu is also buying into their success by carrying their collections in her five stores across China. She and her team, which includes buying director Jillian Xin, creative director Nan Lang and CEO Justin Peng, who is also Liu’s husband, share feedback with designers on what’s selling.
Retail is part of Liu’s background: prior to Labelhood, she founded Dongliang in 2011, a multi-brand store that quickly became a destination and platform for young designers who had no access to retail channels otherwise, opening additional stores in Beijing. By 2013, she was working with Shanghai Fashion Week and Miss Lv to bring some of her designers to London Fashion Week.
The mixed-label runway show was hosted at the Royal Opera House and included the likes of Sankuanz and Ms Min. Afterwards, she brought together the designers and students she had recruited to work the show to her Airbnb. “It was like a salon talk. We introduced the market in China and said that we desperately needed new brands and new blood, and we encouraged them to come back to set up brands.” Cut to 2024, two of the students in that room have founded their own labels: Yushan Li from Pronounce now shows on-calendar during Milan Fashion Week men’s and has a store set up a couple of blocks away from Labelhood’s new shop, while Yirantian Guo celebrated 10 years of her eponymous label this year.
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That runway show then evolved into a one-day showcase organised by Liu. Then, a full platform. Miss Lv helped from the government side — Shanghai Fashion Week is a governmental organisation — but asked Liu to run it and take care of the finances. In February of that same year, Liu took a trip to New York and London Fashion Weeks to study MADE and Fashion East. “After the trip, I said to Miss Lv that maybe we could have a try.” That try saw Dongliang reborn as Labelhood with one store in Shanghai. Labelhood created its own sub-calendar during Shanghai Fashion Week and went from one day to three for the Autumn/Winter 2016 season to seven this past March. It has helped launch and promote brands, including Feng Chen Wang, Jacques Wei, Angel Chen, Oude Waag, Pronounce, Samuel Guì Yang and Shushu/Tong.
The connector
Liu has fashioned herself a contemporary fashion patron, following the footsteps of the likes of Isabella Blow and André Leon Talley. Except that Liu is not an editor, but an avid marketer and a business-minded people person. She is a connector, but the success behind Labelhood hinges on how she runs her business.
“Labelhood is a very sincere business,” she says. “We show respect to the designer and the customer, and the customer can see the effort, but the most critical thing for our young designers is that we can see purity and sincerity in their design core.”
In addition to working with brands, Labelhood will help connect designers with talent across the industry to help them produce their shows. They have a roster of photographers, stylists, producers, and more, but they won’t negotiate their rates for them (it’s important for them to learn on their own,” said Liu). Past designers she has created a breeding ground for Shanghai’s next generation of fashion industry savants. The publicist Bohan Qiu of Boh Projects, who now works with brands such as Supreme or Gucci with their projects in Asia, used to do PR for Labelhood shows early in his career (he still represents the likes of Mark Gong). Ryan Wong used to design fantastical show sets for Labelhood brands, and is now working as a retail visual designer at Louis Vuitton China.
Liu is aware of the financial realities of running a fashion business, which is why Labelhood operates as a retailer and showroom and has not established a prize or fund. “No fund can really make a brand,” she explained, “the whole journey of having a brand is a contest of who can survive last.”
“Their trust is their pocket”
The core tenet behind Labelhood is trust, both between the platform and its brands and the brands and their consumers. “You can trick the market once, but not twice,” Liu advises her designers. “If you follow a trend and you change every season, people forget you.” Liu also advises designers who launch their brands in China to be committed to the market. Liu’s mission is not simply to promote their work, but to expand the industry in China, and to encourage the growth of a strong homegrown market. “Shushu always says that this is their main market,” said Liu, “and if you treat it as your main market they will get back to you with their trust. Their pocket is their trust.”
By serving both as a show platform and a market showroom, Labelhood has become a critical launch pad for independent designers. In addition to its own stores and buyers, Liu and her team also host national and international retailers like Lane Crawford or Net-à-Porter to buy into the designers. Without Labelhood as a one-stop shop, the designers who are just about starting off don’t have the opportunity to do market elsewhere. Labelhood is a key platform to these designers, but it can also be their gatekeeper.
“The designer will pay us back in trust,” continued Liu. “They will follow our tips or the ideas we share with them and then continue to be a part of Labelhood as they grow.” Labelhood has become the It-destination for young design talent in China, but Liu is aware of how this can become a double-edged sword in terms of building a monopoly. “I had to learn to also let go,” she said, “it’s important for the brands to also see what works for them and be independent and grow outside of Labelhood.”
While some brands stick with Labelhood from the very beginning and expand through the organisation — Shushu/Tong, which will be 10 years next year — has opened two stores, one in Shanghai and another in Shenzhen, through a joint venture with Labelhood — others depart the nest. Designer Jacques Wei and his partner Austin Feng launched Jacques Wei with Labelhood, but after a few seasons started showing off-calendar and broke off from the retailer. There is no bad blood, both sides report, with Wei saying that he simply wanted to continue to build his label on his own.
“I may not be good at the merchandizing or the financials of fashion,” says Liu, “I don’t have such knowledge, but I have a distinct skill: people,” she continues. “I’m just the linkage between people.”
José Criales-Unzueta, the author, attends Shanghai Fashion Week on behalf of Vogue Runway each season by invitation of Liu, Labelhood, and the organising committee of Shanghai Fashion Week.
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