A cut above

Held from Sept 3-6 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Centrestage brought together designers from 82 countries. Going by the new works presented by talented independent designers from both Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland at the city's annual flagship international fashion event, it appears that couture continues to dominate the fashion scene in China, and perhaps more significantly, Chinese designers are redefining this genre.

"Couture" refers to made-to-order, handmade garments, and sometimes involves the use of labor-intensive artisanal techniques such as embroidery, beading, pleating and hand-stitching. These days, couturiers are incorporating sculpture, metalwork and even wearable electronics into their designs.

The current popularity of couture in China can be explained by the desire for authentic designs, craftsmanship and storytelling, often with prominent references to heritage and national identity. Chinese celebrities seem to have embraced the idea. At the W Magazine China Annual Gala, held in Shanghai on Aug 19, actor and model Jelly Lin wore a custom Laurence Xu gown with generic Chinese floral embroidery and a pleated skirt designed after handheld traditional Chinese fans. Fellow actor Louise Wong attended the same event wearing a cheongsam-inspired dress by the Chinese couture brand M Essential.

In Hong Kong, members of the affluent, elite society as well as the entertainment world continue to champion custom looks created by local couturiers like Barney Cheng and Victor Chan, underscoring couture's enduring appeal. The growing appetite for personalized luxury clothing with regional and cultural specificities signals strong tailwinds for independent designers reimagining couture at events like Centrestage.

Shining bright

Chinese couturier Guo Pei, who runs her business from studios in Beijing and Paris, was the opening act at Centrestage 2025. The designer is known for elaborate embroidery on lavish gowns, often depicting scenes from Chinese mythology or borrowing motifs from baroque decorative elements seen in European palaces. She is known to have trained women from the farming communities in rural China to produce sophisticated embroidery. Artisans contributing to a piece designed by her are invited to sew their "signatures" into the garment's lining.

Called Gilternity: An Everlasting Radiance, Guo's show opened with an illuminated dress made from optical fiber, developed by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University textile innovation startup Geri Ltd. Its silhouette resembles a bioluminescent jellyfish. "It's a unique fusion of technology and traditional culture," says the designer. "It was challenging to hide all those batteries inside the fabric."

Several gowns in the collection were made from iridescent fabrics and embroidered with traditional Chinese motifs of dragons and flowers. "The materials used in this series are often two-toned. For example, the light-blue one has a silvery sheen, while the purple one's is green, creating a shimmering and vibrant effect," Guo says.

In some of the dresses, collars were replaced with elaborate fixtures in the shape of traditional Chinese handheld fans. Cheongsam-inspired bustiers, and tiered-fringe midi dresses harking back to a style favored by the Shanghai flappers in the 1920s, also figured.

The piece de resistance was, by far, an imposing wedding gown, embroidered with gold thread. "It employs three-dimensional embroidery, creating a relief work-like effect. This is something not found in traditional techniques, not even in our memories of ancient Chinese heritage," Guo points out.

Making a statement

The Centrestage program includes two fashion competitions for young designers — the Hong Kong Young Fashion Designers' Contest (YDC), and the Redress Design Award.

YDC aims to help talented Hong Kong designers with building a brand. Each designer enters a capsule collection of four looks that best showcase their vision into the competition. This year, all the designs presented in this section demonstrated an advanced level of craftsmanship and a culturally informed point of view.

"This year, a lot of the contestants merged contemporary ideas with traditional sensibilities," says YDC mentor and fashion entrepreneur Victoria Tang-Owen. She cites the collection presented by Lau Hei-nga, which bagged both the Excellence and Best Art Direction awards, as an example. Lau made an unconventional use of metal-embellished latex and leather when she used them to create cropped tops with long sleeves on the lines of water sleeves typical of Chinese opera costumes.

The overall winner, Tiger Chung — who also won the Redress Design Award last year — presented a collection that satirized Christian Dior's "the new look" from the '40s while also referencing the everyday lives of Hong Kong's blue-collar workers. "Grassroots workers are often excluded from the mainstream fashion narrative.

When their traces are translated into couture's coded language, audience members are compelled to reexamine the relationship between fashion and class hierarchies," the designer says.

Bearing a cheeky title, Bior, the collection included a skewed version of a bar jacket cut in the signature Dior style. An electric fan had been repurposed into a hat. Tailored to perfection and yet undoubtedly an homage to street culture, the collection merged the idea of couture with the realities of grassroots life in a fresh and precise manner.

The designs presented by Mook Yip, who took home the My Favorite Collection award, were equally intriguing. His Modern Animals collection embodies the idea of Hong Kong as a concrete jungle. The designs are a quirky fusion of business attire and animal hide layers. Recycled and faux fur is used for layering overcoats, trousers and even shorts.

The designer says that the range is inspired by the ancient Chinese idiom that translates as "to be both a cow and a horse", or in other words, to be saddled with work that is both exhausting and thankless. The cutthroat competition that is part and parcel of the corporate world is referenced in the gladiator-like corsets with ripped muscle marks molded onto regular buttoned-up shirts. The contouring of the muscles on plant-based leather was done by hand over two days. "Such stylistic features can't be mass-produced," says Yip.

Carla Zhang, a Chinese-born, Philippines-based designer, won the Redress Design Award 2025, an international competition that promotes sustainable fashion. She captured the hearts of the judges with her range of hand-woven dresses, made entirely out of factory surplus cords and yarns. Inspired by the frenetic pace of life in Shanghai, where Zhang used to live, the dresses have no seams, boning or any other elements that are used to create structure in clothes. And yet, remarkably enough, the clothes present a distinct silhouette.

"The elderly people who mend and rework worn-out garments with great care" in Beijing inspired the line of clothes presented by competition finalist Nie Yixuan. She upcycles nylon blazers into ingenious tops, pairing them with floor-sweeping sashes, and creates skirts from recycling secondhand tops. "Each look is inspired by the ordinary and yet emotionally rich Beijing street scenes, marked by makeshift barber shops, elderly men playing chess, disparate household objects placed at doorsteps," says the designer.

At Centrestage 2025, it was evident that independent Chinese designers are redefining the idea of luxury designer clothing by opting for couture as their medium. From Guo's extravagant reimagining of Chinese mythology to Chung's subversive grassroots narratives to Zhang's sustainability-focused innovations, these creations demonstrate that couture is more than bespoke garments — that it could serve as a canvas for cultural storytelling and creative rebellion.

As China's luxury fashion market continues to grow, the rise of couture signals a new era where independent Chinese voices are shaping the future of global fashion, one hand-stitched creation at a time.