In the editor’s letter for the January issue of Vogue, Anna Wintour congratulates the winners of this year’s CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards and also touts the initiative’s “worldwide” expansion (it now exists in Italy, the U.K., and France, which doesn’t exactly make it globe-spanning, but no matter). She concludes her plug by writing, “We hope China is next.”
Not only does expanding the Vogue Fashion Fund initiative to China explain Anna’s visit there a few weeks ago, but it makes all kinds of economic sense: Fashion designers have been attempting to woo Chinese consumers left and right (Diane Von Furstenberg proclaimed to the Times last week that she “would like to sell every Chinese a T-shirt,” and several big-name labels have shown their collections there over the past year, including Chanel and Christian Dior). Setting up a Vogue Fashion Fund in coordination with a Chinese equivalent of the CFDA or the U.K.’s BFA would provide plenty of platforms for brands to market themselves to Chinese consumers, who have proven themselves to have a tremendous appetite for luxury goods. So all in all, this is not a huge surprise, and it will be interesting to see the crop of Chinese designers that this initiative could help to develop.
