Emerging Chinese Fashion Brands: The Silent Revolution?

China exports more textile and apparel than any other country in the world. However, Chinese fashion brands have not made an impact on the international fashion scene yet. Aim of this study is to analyse the relationship between country-of-origin (COO) and the legitimisation process of the international fashion system, from the perspective of emerging Chinese fashion brands. We developed a framework to assess the COO of the brand, identifying those brands featuring Chinese cues, and analysing their common patterns of access to the fashion system. We compared our findings with the antecedent case of the “Japanese Revolution” occurred in the 1980s. A qualitative approach based upon grounded theory and qualitative cluster analysis was used in this study. Findings suggest that Chinese fashion brands are increasingly the result of multi-country contributions. Moreover, we found that Chinese designers do not access the international fashion system through an exoticisation process, as it had been the case of the Japanese. Indeed, they grow inside the fashion system by applying to the Western education system: that is, through a naturalisation process.