Hong Kong’s fashion ambition faces its biggest test yet

HONG KONG — On a cool December evening, a runway hidden inside the waterfront Palace Museum, filled with models wearing looks from London, Paris, Seoul, Shenzhen and Hong Kong, all within the same show. It was a tableau few other cities could stage: a genuinely international mix, with designers from Italy, the mainland, the UK, France and Korea sharing the same catwalk as emerging Hong Kong labels.

This was Fashion Fest Hong Kong 2025, the city’s government-backed, multi-week cultural initiative created to position Hong Kong as Asia’s emerging fashion-design hub. Now in what officials call its second full-scale edition after a launch in late 2024, the festival brings together seven flagship programmes, such as couture shows, digital fashion showcases, a denim festival, sustainability dialogues and cross-disciplinary exhibitions, scattered across museums, malls and cultural venues.

But the mood this year was subdued. The city was still in collective mourning following the devastating fires that claimed too many lives. Organisers opted for restraint: fewer parties, quieter programming, moments of silence woven into public events. Still, the city pressed on, a gesture of resilience, or perhaps insistence, echoing Hong Kong’s long-held narrative of pushing forward even in difficult times.

A global destination

In official terms, Fashion Fest carries a lofty mandate: to elevate Hong Kong as a global destination for mega cultural events and to nurture its creative economy. The Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency (CCIDA), established by the Hong Kong government in 2023, has become the festival’s primary engine. Its commissioner, Drew Lai Shai-Ming, opened one of the festival’s anchor programmes, Fashion Asia Hong Kong - Fashion Challenges Forum - by reiterating the city’s unique role as a connector, between East and West, between heritage and innovation, between manufacturing legacy and contemporary design.

Industry headwinds: A global luxury slowdown hits home

Hong Kong’s path is complicated by forces well beyond its borders. The global luxury sector has softened in 2024 and 2025, with analysts citing a slowdown in aspirational spending, weaker mainland Chinese travel and recalibrated pricing strategies across major houses. The Hong Kong luxury market, once sharply buoyed by inbound shoppers from mainland China, has felt that contraction. Many Hong Kong consumers now buy across the border, where mainland prices can be more favourable and shopping malls are eager for their business.

At the Fashion Challenges Forum, Andre Hou, a Hong Kong–born luxury strategist known for advising European houses on Asian consumer behaviour, framed this shift bluntly. The era of the logo is over, he said during a panel on new consumer expectations. Shoppers want to know who made something, how it was made, and why it exists.

Hou argued the power has moved decisively to the consumer: Brands can’t coast on reputation anymore, they must be disciplined and precise. Craftsmanship matters again.

Craft front and center: Italian precision meets Chinese heritage

That emphasis on craftsmanship was visible across multiple exhibitions. The CityUHK “Fashion to Reconnect” showcase, one of the most academically rigorous events of the Fest, staged a cultural exchange between Italian and Chinese designers, spotlighting artisanal processes rather than seasonal trends. Pieces from Missoni and Zegna hung beside creations by Hong Kong’s Vivienne Tam and Dorian Ho, tracing dialogues between textile innovation, cultural motifs and sustainability.

The curator described the exhibition as “a rare moment of mutuality,” noting that it positioned Chinese craft not as a contrast to European luxury but as an equal partner.

Denim, democracy and one very large cat sculpture

My personal highlight came unexpectedly, not at a runway show or an invitation-only salon, but inside the Harbour City mall, where the Fest’s Denim Festival was held in an open public space. Anchored by a jubilant centrepiece: a towering patchwork denim cat sculpture by the Hong Kong designer-artist Sonic Lam.

Lam, known for what he calls his “remake philosophy,” constructs works from discarded garments and deadstock fabrics sourced from local communities. The patched, friendly-looking feline - part mascot, part provocation - is a magnet for shoppers, influencers, fashionistas, art lovers and children alike. The piece speaks of Hong Kong’s ingenuity, and the beauty of our imperfections.

Exhibiting such work in a mall, rather than a private venue, felt on point. Fashion can become insular; here, it was thrust back into public life. Alongside the Clockenflap Music & Arts festival, which housed the exhibition “10 Asian Designers to Watch,” it was perhaps the festival’s most accessible and democratic moment.

The missing piece: Retail support

When I walked through several of the city’s major shopping districts during the Fest — Tsim Sha Tsui, Central, Causeway Bay, I found little to indicate that one of Hong Kong’s largest arts initiatives of the year was under way. There was little in the way of special window takeovers or visible partnerships with the city’s major department stores. That gap, between institutional ambition and urban visibility, hints at a deeper question of synergy. Lane Crawford, the city’s most influential luxury department store, offered no visible Fashion Fest alignment. Nor did the majority of the city’s malls, despite being key partners in Hong Kong’s shopping-tourism economy.

In cities like Paris or London, major retailers treat local design weeks as civic obligations: window installations, capsule collections, curated showcases of regional talent. In Hong Kong, that connective tissue is still thin. Without it, designers can find themselves celebrated in government-funded programmes only to fade from public view soon after.

Shifting ground and rising possibility

Hong Kong’s creative potential remains immense. The city still possesses deep textile knowledge, unmatched logistics infrastructure, geographical proximity to mainland production hubs, and access to one of the world’s most influential consumer bases. And across China, the rise of homegrown labels — from luxury ready-to-wear to streetwear collectives — is creating a new competitive landscape. Chinese consumers are buying Chinese brands at levels unthinkable a decade ago.

Hong Kong sits at the crossroads of that shift. It is both part of the ecosystem and outside of it; both historically global and increasingly challenged to define its own voice as mainland China’s fashion identity accelerates.

At this year’s Fashion Fest, Hong Kong didn’t declare itself the next Milan or Paris. Instead, it offered something more modest and perhaps more meaningful: a platform where cross-cultural creativity felt genuinely possible, and where craft stood front and centre in a global industry hungry for authenticity.

If Hong Kong can connect its institutions, its retailers, its creative communities and its increasingly discerning consumers, it may yet carve out a new role in the post-logo fashion era, not as a factory, nor merely a marketplace, but as a genuine cultural engine.