How does a design become a product? How can a brand stay resilient through market cycles? And in the age of AI, what is still worth preserving? Over the past decade, the fashion industry has been reshaped. Paris, Milan, the media and independent boutiques still matter. But social media, e-commerce and livestreaming have given consumers a more direct say in what counts as ‘good design’. Meanwhile, China’s designers, manufacturing capabilities and supply chains have all advanced rapidly.

Xuzhi Chen (CEIBS GEMBA 2024), fashion designer, founder and artistic director of XU ZHI, has taken a path from independent design to brand collaborations, product development and team leadership. Here, he reflects on how the industry has changed and considers three practical questions.

01 Who decides what makes good design?

When I first entered the industry, fashion was still very much a top-down world.

There were far fewer ways to follow the industry than there are today. People read magazines, browsed avant-garde boutiques and waited for Fashion Weeks in Paris, Milan, London and New York. In those cities, during those same few days, editors, buyers and designers went to shows, placed orders and exchanged ideas. Over time, they formed a shared view of what would matter next season and what deserved attention. That view then filtered through the market, eventually shaping what reached the public.

In those days, ‘good design’ was indeed defined first by a small circle at the top of the industry. Why did Paris and Milan hold that authority for so long? It was no accident. Luxury brands had spent decades, even centuries, building their presence there. Media, buyers, brands, schools and the wider industry had developed around them. In time, that ecosystem became the industry’s benchmark.

I benefited from that system myself.

When I graduated in 2015, my work featured a technique that combined yarn weaving with embroidery. It was somewhat like knitting, but created a fringed texture. The media and buyers quickly took notice, and some international boutiques were willing to stock the pieces. When business was strong, the market was receptive to novelty. A designer fresh out of school could gain attention with a striking visual idea and distinctive craftsmanship.

I soon came to see the other side of that system. My technique was highly distinctive, but the clothes felt closer to eveningwear—almost to couture—and were not especially suited to everyday life. The media thought they were beautiful, and buyers found them fresh in the first season. But by around 2017 or 2018, I could see that once the novelty faded, they became much harder to sell.

That experience had a lasting impact on me. It taught me that being noticed and becoming a viable product are two different things.

I often look to Issey Miyake’s work as a point of comparison. Its pleating is instantly recognisable, but what is even more remarkable is that it can be produced at scale in garments that are lightweight, comfortable and easy to wear every day. I love wearing Issey Miyake on holiday: the clothes are light and don’t call for a special occasion. Turning a technique into both a design language and a viable product is exceptionally difficult.

By around 2019 or 2020, I was asking myself how to turn the techniques, media visibility and brand momentum I had built over the previous years into more mature ready-to-wear. I later moved into menswear, added new categories and gradually developed a full product range from what had begun as a single signature technique. That was when I first understood clearly that design cannot live only on the runway or in photographs; ultimately, it has to work for the people who wear it.

Looking back, I think the biggest change in the industry in recent years has come from social media.

People often say that consumers once looked to luxury brands for inspiration, but now they imitate bloggers and influencers. I see it somewhat differently. The real change is not that bloggers have become a new authority; it is that clothes are now seen in different contexts.

In the past, you might have encountered a garment on the runway or in a fashion editorial. Today, you are more likely to see how someone wears it in real life. She might be in her twenties, a mother in her thirties, or a woman in her forties or fifties. She might be heading to work, going on holiday, meeting friends for dinner or picking up her children. People lead different lives, and clothes are now seen in the context of those lives.

That is why Xiaohongshu, Douyin and livestreaming have changed the way people shop for fashion. In recent years, even high-priced fashion has increasingly found its way into online content and livestreams. Consumers are not simply asking whether an influencer looks good in an outfit. They are asking: Is this a life I aspire to? Would these clothes work for me—for my job, or on holiday?

Brands, too, are working from a different frame of reference. In the past, the industry told consumers what they should wear that year. Now, brands look more directly at what consumers actually need. Who is she? Which city does she live in? What does her day look like? What occasions does she dress for? Why does she need this garment? These questions have become more immediate than ‘What’s in fashion this year?’

Consumers have also become more independent in their choices. A recognisable logo once served as a statement of status in its own right. Today, many people care more about developing a style of their own. How a garment can be styled, the quality and feel of its fabric, whether its cut suits them, and how often they can wear it all inform their decisions.

Paris still matters, of course, as do leading media outlets and buyers. But the industry’s traditional system no longer has the final say on what counts as good design. The industry makes its judgements, platforms amplify them, and consumers make their own based on the lives they lead.

02 Chinese design has the talent. What it needs is time.

If you ask me why China still lacks a globally recognised fashion brand, my answer is simple: what we lack most is time.

That is not to say Chinese designers lack ability. Quite the opposite. From what I have seen at Shanghai Fashion Week and among younger designers, I do not believe Chinese design is any weaker than design elsewhere in the world. Fabrics, craftsmanship, photography and visual presentation have all improved rapidly, as has the ability to build a cohesive brand across both product and image. Manufacturing has advanced just as quickly. In knitwear, for example, equipment, techniques and supply chains have all been catching up at a remarkable pace.

So I no longer think it is accurate to dismiss the issue by saying that Chinese design simply is not good enough.

Building a brand takes time. Many European and American labels that now seem like established fixtures have been around for decades, even centuries. Even those considered relatively new may have been around for 30 or 40 years. China’s commercial fashion brands have not had the same time to grow. A ten-year-old brand has ten years behind it; a twenty-year-old brand has twenty. No funding round, breakout product or move into overseas markets can make up for the years it takes to build a brand.

The challenge is that fashion is always moving on to the next new thing. A brand cannot succeed simply by surviving; it has to keep proving itself over time.

I see two broad ways for a brand to endure. One is to keep evolving, but with a clear sense of direction. A brand needs a stable core, while each creative director and each generation finds new ways to respond to the culture and everyday life of its time. As one generation of consumers moves on, the brand has to give the next a reason to embrace it.

The other is to create something enduring enough to become a classic. It might be a technique, a product or a distinctive design language—something people will still want to buy decades later. Issey Miyake’s pleating is one example. It is more than an idea: it is instantly recognisable, can be produced at scale and is made to be worn again and again.

Neither path is easy. Change too much, and a brand may lose its identity; stand still, and it risks being left behind. London has long been fertile ground for avant-garde designers, but I have also seen brands appear and disappear within just a few seasons, or a couple of years. The fashion industry can move on from a brand very quickly.

When I say Chinese brands need time, I do not mean that success will come simply from staying in business long enough. Time is a test. When the market is strong, many problems can remain hidden. When it weakens, a brand has to confront harder questions: Do people still want its products? Can its cash flow withstand the pressure? When one generation of customers moves on, what will give the next a reason to choose the brand? It takes a full market cycle to find out.

Over the past few years, I have worked in very different settings: building an independent designer label, collaborating with start-ups such as NEIWAI, working on product development and business transformation at a publicly listed apparel company, and later managing a larger design and product team. Despite their differences, these businesses faced similar questions: Who is the customer? As customers grow older and their financial circumstances and lifestyles change, can the brand continue to offer something relevant to them?

CEIBS gave me a broader perspective on these questions. Early in my career, I focused mainly on the work itself. Later, I began to consider consumer demand, market size and business models. China has a huge market, but that does not mean every category has a sufficiently broad consumer base. In Europe and the United States, many categories are already part of everyday life, giving designer labels more room to grow at home. For Chinese brands to move forward, good design alone is not enough. Consumer habits and lifestyles—and the market itself—need time to mature.

The same applies to culture.

Adding Chinese motifs to clothing or calling it ‘new Chinese style’ does not automatically give a brand international appeal. Brands that cross borders often succeed by making people aspire to a particular way of life or to a particular image of themselves. Some are drawn to the ease and sunlit spirit associated with France; others to a quieter, more restrained and intellectual sensibility. People are buying more than clothes. They are asking themselves: ‘When I wear this, do I feel closer to the person I want to be?’

Why have Japan and South Korea made headway in this area? In both cases, fashion was part of a broader shift. Japanese designers came into their own amid changes in the economy, domestic consumption, social tastes and industrial capacity. South Korea’s growing influence in fashion and beauty has travelled alongside its music, film and television. In both cases, consumers at home first embraced and invested in that way of life. Over time, it became something people elsewhere could understand, too.

Chinese design will go through a similar process, but it will take more than a slogan about ‘telling China’s story’. The experiences that have shaped our generation of designers are rooted in a distinctly Chinese context. The question is when those experiences will take shape as a way of life and a cultural world that people in other countries can readily relate to—and perhaps want to be part of.

When that day comes, there may be no need to insist that something is Chinese. People will simply think: this is good; I want to wear it, and I want to live this way, too.

My view, then, remains the same: Chinese design has come a long way, and a lack of ability is no longer the main issue. The real challenge is to give brands, markets, consumer habits and culture the time to develop—and to weather the cycles that come with that process.

03 When good design becomes easier to create, what are brands selling?

There is much debate about whether AI will replace designers. The first change I have noticed in my own work is a dramatic gain in efficiency.

Take design renderings. It used to take a designer several days, sometimes a week, to develop a small collection from hand sketches and line drawings into polished visuals. With generative tools, my team can now produce in about two hours what once took days—and the images can already look close to the finished garments.

The benefits go beyond saving time on drawings. In the past, a line drawing could be difficult for colleagues in merchandising or supply chain to interpret. Everyone had to imagine what the finished garment might look like. Now, we can create an image that closely resembles the actual product before discussing the cut, fabric, colour and product mix. That gives different teams a much clearer basis for discussion.

AI can also help with data analysis and market insights, and speed up the processing of information for inventory and merchandising decisions. It will change how teams divide up the work, and many tasks that are purely executional will become less common. I do not shy away from that.

But clothing has one very practical requirement: it has to work as a product.

However beautiful an image AI generates, a garment still has to be made. It has to go through fabric selection, pattern-making, sampling, production and the supply chain before it reaches a shop and, ultimately, the customer. How it feels to wear, the feel of the fabric, the cut and the way the pieces come together in a store are all things a picture cannot convey.

An advertising image may draw people in, and AI may help a company reduce the cost of producing campaign imagery. But what customers ultimately pay for is the garment itself.

In that sense, AI will sharpen a question that has been there all along: as creating visually appealing designs becomes cheaper and more widespread, why should consumers pay several times more for a brand?

The answer cannot simply be that the design looks better in a rendering.

Individual products can certainly be copied. Someone can imitate the cut of a T-shirt and use a similar fibre composition—or even make a better version. The market has long been full of pieces that echo Issey Miyake’s pleats and Maison Margiela’s Tabi shoes, yet consumers continue to buy the originals.

What is harder to copy, I think, is a brand’s overall feel. That may sound intangible, but it has very concrete implications for a business.

A brand is more than a single bestseller. It offers ideas about what to wear to work, on holiday or out to dinner, and how to bring those pieces together into an outfit. Then there is how the clothes are photographed, the models the brand chooses, the stores it opens, the spaces it creates and the language it uses. Together, these elements shape how consumers experience the brand.

A competitor may copy one or two of my products, but replicating the full range, the occasions it serves and the brand’s way of presenting itself is much harder. Harder still is knowing how the brand will evolve.

Fashion cycles are getting shorter. By the time a competitor spots a successful product, develops its own version and brings it to market, the moment may already have passed. A designer’s real advantage is not a single piece that others cannot copy, but the ability to bring a fresh perspective to each new season and whatever comes next.

That matters even more when consumers are cautious about spending. People already have clothes to wear. Why buy another? A garment has to solve a real problem or strike an emotional chord. Without either, it makes little difference how many designs you draw or styles you produce.

I am not especially worried that AI will make design obsolete. The way designers work will change, as will team sizes and the division of responsibilities. But clothes still have to be made, and brands still have to decide what to make, who it is for and for what occasions. Those decisions still require human judgement.

For designers, the most important skill may no longer be the ability to produce a beautiful rendering. It will be the ability to turn ideas into products, connect product development with the supply chain and consumer needs, and create something people truly want to wear and buy.