From Shanghai to Manila, a New Generation Is Redrawing Asian Fashion

For its tenth anniversary, Fashion Asia Hong Kong turned its 10 Asian Designers To Watch platform into something it had never been before: a runway. The debut 10 Asian Designers To Watch Fashion Show and Award Presentation Ceremony unfolded on September 3 alongside the Hong Kong Fashion Fest Gala, with a concurrent exhibition running through September 13 at Peak Galleria, and MEOVV‘s Gawon stepping out as a special guest in looks by winning labels DISAYA and LEJE. Behind the show sat ten designers from the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea and the Philippines, each building a distinct language out of craft, memory and hard commercial math. Hypebeast sat down with all ten to hear how they got here.

Editor’s note: The conversations with Chén Sifān, WMWM, NULLUS and SEAN SUEN were translated from Mandarin; those with Tigerstrolling and KINYAN LAM from Cantonese. Maligaya, DISAYA and NOVEL spoke in English, and LEJE responded in writing. Translated quotes are marked as such.

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Chén Sifān (Sifan Chen), Chinese Mainland

Sifan Chen starts with himself, drawing on the books he reads and fragments gathered while traveling. He is wary of designing for an international system and prefers to watch the street. “Street style reflects the mood of the whole society,” he says (translated from Mandarin), describing the passersby he studies around Shanghai. That instinct for the everyday carries into his standout exhibition piece, a hand-woven denim jacket whose fiber, he explains, is actually cashmere and linen, woven by hand on old machines in Guizhou so it trades denim’s usual stiffness for something soft and breathable. His hardest problem is getting buyers and clients to accept a high price, which he answers by walking them through where each piece comes from. Ask him what he wants five years out and he waves off grand ambitions, offering instead a wish “to show a more diverse Asian culture, rather than the fantasy of Asia or the East seen under a Western system” (translated from Mandarin). The line he still returns to came from Fabio Piras, his MA course leader at Central Saint Martins: “I need to trust my simplicity” (translated from Mandarin), he recalls, advice that taught him not to fear a clean silhouette.

DISAYA (Disaya Sorakraikitikul), Thailand

Disaya Sorakraikitikul always begins with a craft technique, then hunts for a new way to use it across a silhouette or a pattern. Culture, for her, is not something to copy. Translating it into fashion is “less about directly reproducing traditional motif,” she says, and more about the emotion and patience behind the making. She is unbothered by the trend cycle: “We see trends as a conversation rather than a direction,” she offers, framing craftsmanship as a way to slow fashion down. Gender is something she dissolves in the cloth itself, setting embroidery and lace against structured tailoring so a piece lands “delicate yet powerful, sensual yet structure.” Her guiding belief is that “fashion should not define who you are, but give you the freedom to explore who you can be.” What she brought to Hong Kong were her crystal macramé jeans, a best seller she keeps developing, in which hand-knitted macramé is fixed piece by piece onto denim; she wanted them to “feel effortless, versatile, and relevant across different gender and occasions.” On the business, she is candid: “One of the greatest challenge is finding the right balance between the artistic and the commercial.” In five years she hopes to be seen “not simply as a Thai brand, but as a brand with a distinct perspective.” Her mentor, she says, was Louise Wilson at Central Saint Martins, “my greatest intellectual mentor,” who taught her how to think.

KINYAN LAM (Kinyan Lam), Hong Kong

For Kinyan Lam, the trend question misses the point; what he watches is his customer. “Finding our target audience is more important than what’s currently trending,” he says (translated from Cantonese), reasoning that if his customers are not a young market, there is no sense chasing youth-coded fashion and losing the people he already has. Three years in, he is upfront that money comes first. “The first thing a brand must consider is whether you can sustain the business, and whether you can sustain it depends on cash flow,” he explains (translated from Cantonese), which is why he keeps his focus on daily wear and holds back the dreamier art pieces until the supply chain is steady. That daily-wear priority is also personal: “I really want our clothes to maintain a close distance with people,” he says (translated from Cantonese), describing a piece that looks plain from afar but reveals its color and detail up close. Pressed on who shaped the label, he points to the industry figures who helped a dyeing operation become a brand, naming Tasha of LABELHOOD and Judy of Joyce, whose feedback, he notes, was “very important for a brand” (translated from Cantonese) in refining how his clothes fit and where they source.

LEJE (Yangmo Je and Juhyeong Kang), South Korea

The South Korea duo behind LEJE start from the name itself, taken from the French word for “self,” and light up when the talk turns to research. “We are habitual collectors of intriguing elements,” they say, describing archives they crack open for each collection, many drawers still unopened. Heritage, to them, is a method and not a costume: “To us, tradition is a starting point, not a final destination,” they explain, pushing mother-of-pearl inlay or metalwork through modern silhouettes. Their exhibition centerpiece belongs to the MEIN (美人) series, meaning “a beautiful person,” and its Daenggi Dress reinterprets a ribbon once worn in the braided hair of unmarried women, running roughly ten meters and hand-beaded strand by strand with reimagined Joseon royal motifs. On the perennial tug between art and income, they keep it simple: “Striking a harmony between artistic originality and commercial practicality is essential.” They make no claim to remake the region, hoping only to be known five years on for articulating Korean heritage in their own voice.

Maligaya Clothing Co. (Roko Arceo), The Philippines

Roko Arceo works backwards from fabric. “One of our brand core values is sustainability. So we start by sourcing the materials first,” he says of a collection made largely of one-offs. He handles gender through sizing as much as cut: “All of our shirts start from XS to XL, meaning all of the women from XS or 2XS can wear some of our men’s pieces,” he explains, adding that he has been putting lace on men too. His exhibition work came out of a collection he calls “Found Treasures,” antique doilies naturally dyed and coaxed into corals and sea creatures. The hardest part of it all, he admits, is the principle he refuses to drop: “Having a sustainable-centered brand is one of the hardest things to do as a fashion designer.” His ambition is specific: “I hope in five years, Maligaya will start a conversation as to how we can be fashionable and sustainable at the same time.” And when the talk turns to mentors, he points sideways, to the associates he mentors and learns from in return: “Shout out to Athena, Ashanti, and Dale.”

NOVEL (Prince Padilla), The Philippines

Prince Padilla lets the material lead. “We’re led by material research first and foremost; it dictates a lot of what I do,” he says, tracing the instinct to a fine art background that came before any fashion training. Unisex design is simply his default, coming as he does from menswear: a garment, he shrugs, is “usually, it is really just a garment.” For the exhibition he left an intensely embroidered look unlined on purpose, so the raw stitches and beadwork inside stay on show. His fine art past taught him to value what he leaves out, too: “It’s often more important for me to tell people what we didn’t do, as opposed to what we did.” The label started almost by accident during the pandemic, which is why he is relaxed about the future, comfortably saying “we’re not sure” even as he works to bring more contemporary design to Manila’s young scene.

NULLUS (Li Gao, Yue Ming and Benjamin Tao), Chinese Mainland

The Chinese Mainland menswear team treat pop culture as a loop, digging for the older, classic idea beneath a passing fad before deciding whether it fits. Their take on gender is structural, softening the aggression built into menswear by relaxing shoulders and easing waistlines. For the show they gave two seasons, Fall/Winter 2026 and Spring/Summer 2027, to a rethink of the pocket, guided by a line they deliver without hesitation: “Fabric is like the skin of the clothing, the silhouette is the skeleton, and the pockets are like containers” (translated from Mandarin), reasoning that men, less likely to carry a bag, need them more. They are the most openly ambitious of the cohort. “I hope we can truly represent Asia and step onto the world stage,” they say (translated from Mandarin), noting how rarely Chinese menswear gets there. Their lodestar is Rei Kawakubo, who they remember “is not interested in fashion; she is only interested in clothes that have never existed before” (translated from Mandarin).

SEAN SUEN (Sean Suen), Chinese Mainland

Sean Suen imagines a person and designs for them, asking what they read and where they have been. This season became “Daydream,” and he tells its origin plainly: “It originates from an early summer afternoon when I was listening to Debussy’s music and had a daydream” (translated from Mandarin). On heritage he is sharp about the easy route, insisting that “cultural background isn’t just about superficial symbols; it’s something you grow up with” (translated from Mandarin), which is why he steers clear of overtly ethnic work and treats trends as something to mine rather than follow. Creativity and commerce, he figures, keep testing one another over time, with the market eventually showing which ideas were built to last. What he wants most is to escape the label: “I don’t want the brand to be pigeonholed,” he says (translated from Mandarin), hoping a viewer will one day know a garment is his on sight.

Tigerstrolling (Tiger Chung & Tiger Chung), Hong Kong

The two Tigers behind the Hong Kong label insist they never sat down to make a gender statement; they build what feels sharp and let belonging follow. On the exhibition floor that meant collapsing a ballet tutu into a track outfit for one deadpan total look, the kind of high-low collision they call the whole point of the brand. They bristle at the idea that creativity and commerce are at odds: “You can be highly creative, but that item needs to be user-friendly and wearable, and then it’s fine,” they say (translated from Cantonese). Five years from now, they want the word “Tiger” to stand for a feeling words cannot quite catch. The lesson that stuck landed in Paris this past March, after their first ready-to-wear show, when Susie Bubble pulled them aside: “Tiger, you have a lot of creativity, but you really need to think about making a few more pieces that people actually want to own,” they recall her saying (translated from Cantonese), a single sentence that changed how they run the label.

WMWM (Xiaolin Song), Chinese Mainland

Ten years into her Shanghai womenswear label, Xiaolin Song mixes the local and the imported without fuss, pairing British Fair Isle motifs with Chinese hot-fix rhinestones and handwork. On trends, she gives the bluntest answer of anyone: “We have always been a brand with an androgynous vintage style, with a bit of playfulness, and our brand is already ten years old,” she says (translated from Mandarin), noting the look has barely moved. She made her genderless case on the runway by casting men in her florals, because “I feel that males wearing our florals actually give off a different kind of androgynous feel” (translated from Mandarin). Her start was unusually smooth, her graduate collection picked up by Lane Crawford through a designer support program, though she says the real challenge since has been material and the lived comfort of a garment as her direct-to-consumer side has grown.

Ten labels, five markets and no single house style, yet the through-line is unmistakable: a generation more interested in how a thing is made, and why, than in whatever the feed is chasing this week. The 10 Asian Designers To Watch Exhibition runs through September 13 at Peak Galleria, where the denim, the doilies, the pockets, the macramé and the ten-meter ribbon can be seen up close, exactly the way their makers intended.

Sponsored by the Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency (CCIDA) under the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau, and organised by Hong Kong Design Centre (HKDC), FASHION ASIA HONG KONG (Fashion Asia) has brought together design talent and industry leaders from across Asia, fostering innovation and supporting the development of the fashion industry, strengthen Hong Kong’s position as an international fashion hub. Fashion Asia is also one of the flagship programmes of the Hong Kong Fashion Fest.