China’s consumers increasingly embrace Asian brands, report finds

Dive Brief:

America’s quiet luxury brand Fear of God topped the annual Fashion IP 100 list, rising from the No. 2 spot last year. Its casual diffusion Essentials brand nabbed the second spot. The report measures which brands are most popular among Chinese consumers.
The Fashion Exchange, which defines a fashion IP as a property connected to or started by a designer/designer brand, artist, celebrity or influencer, partnered with CBNData to put out the 2022 Fashion IP 100.
For the first time since the Fashion IP 100 debuted in 2019, it had more Asian fashion IPs than those from the Americas, with 31 from the U.S., 24 from China, 15 from Japan, 12 from France, seven from South Korea and three from the U.K.

Dive Insight:

When the Fashion IP 100 debuted in 2019, the world was pre-pandemic, and Chinese consumer tastes skewed more toward U.S. brands like Yeezy and Supreme.

This year’s list showed a notable shift.

The report said Yeezy “was not included in the ranking for various reasons,” and streetwear brand Supreme dropped to 13th place. Instead, Fear of God dominated the list, taking the top two spots with its main line and diffusion line. This is the first time that two of the top three spots have been taken by the same founder.

Chinese celebrities nabbed the next two spots, with model Liu Wen’s elevated basics brand at the third spot, and singer, actor and former model Shawn Yue’s denim-heavy Madness line taking No. 4. Rihanna’s Fenty was in fifth place, with brands from Issey Miyake, Justin Bieber, Thom Browne, Jingting Bai, and Alexander Wang rounding out the top 10.

In 2019, China only had eight fashion IPs on the list. That number has since grown to 24, which the report attributes to the popularity of Chinese brands and new China-made goods among the country’s consumers — especially Gen Z.

On the other hand, the report said, the number of fashion IPs from the U.S. declined from 47 in 2019 to 31 in 2022. It added that emerging talents from China, South Korea, Japan and France have diluted the once-dominant U.S. presence.

This year’s top 100 was calculated based on consumption influence, search engine prevalence and social media popularity, and indexed over 400 global fashion IPs to select the top 100 IPs that performed best within the Chinese market.

It is also released alongside a white paper covering larger fashion trends, movements and practices regarding Chinese consumers.