Feature: Made-in-China fashion takes center stage in Italian fashion capital

Fifteen emerging models wearing Made-in-China brands took part in an event held in a mansion in the heart of Milan on Tuesday, attracting plenty of visitors from the fashion world.

The models were dressed in creations produced by six Chinese fashion brands. Each brand used the sketches of a finalist designer of Vogue Talents for Asia, a scouting project conceived by Elite and Vogue Italia, its senior editor Sara Maino told Xinhua.

"Integration between creativeness and industry is very important," she underlined, adding the event allowed designers to meet China and for China to display its global creativity.

Yu Min, head fashion designer at Canudilo H Holidays, among the brands on stage in Milan, said the event was an occasion for Chinese brands to showcase themselves and integrate into the global market.

"We have a lot to study from the Western fashion world, but now Chinese fashion brands have also started blending Asian culture with Western trends," Yu told Xinhua.

Yi was another one of the selected Chinese brands. "Red is the predominant color in our collection. We like to spread a strong bright-colored feeling," fashion designer Hu Yi, who created the brand, told Xinhua. "Our style is quite simple, but at the same time enriched with handmade weaving in the details," she noted.

In fact, China not only is an enormous market, but also a "workshop of the world," John Hooks, CEO of PGM Group, a holding company with a focus on fashion services and luxury brands of which Elite is part, told Xinhua.

Hooks said there is enormous space for making "high-quality products and special things" in China. "They have a wealth of craftsmanship, a long tradition of lace making, embroidery, they are a fantastic world of inspiration and creativity that we would love to be able to be inspired by," he said.

Elite, a leading modeling agency group with a network of 30 agencies, was the first international agency to open in China. Hooks underlined that models are "the human face of fashion" and "China has a very great source of models."

Beppe D'Elia, hair stylist at the event, told Xinhua: "I find their look, hair and make-up very suitable for experimentation."

Italian fashion designer Marco De Vincenzo said he was attracted by China's fashion world. "They have a very personal way to interpret contemporary fashion. They have millennia of history, but at the same time a newly born fashion world free from some influences of the past," he noted. "We will have great surprises from them." Endit