Alexander Chu represents the new generation of movers in the Chinese fashion world. I mean the real movers, not editors, bloggers, and independent designers. His family owns a factory in Zhejiang specializing in fur and leather that has done very well commercially by producing OEM for large foreign brands. Now Alexander is using this strong base to create a label of his own. Chinese factories often have the production capacity but lack the creative spirit needed to make the jump to offering their own label. But I’m sure we will be seeing more and more factory labels like Natural Gift. Once they become better at both design and branding, some will be a potent force in the fashion world that presents a different kind of model to the sort of Western brand that just controls the name and image while outsourcing the production to factories in China. I wonder if this sort of vertical integration will work.
