Hong Kong has long held a special place as one of those unique places in the world that serve as a meeting ground for cultures from the East and West. In recent years, the city has certainly gotten a boost of fashion credibility as well, with major fashion brands choosing to host their events there: Chanel restaged its Cruise 2025 show there this past November, and Louis Vuitton presented its blockbuster Men’s Pre-Fall 2024 collection on the Victoria Harbour waterfront to a star-studded audience last year.
And now, if the inaugural Hong Kong Fashion Fest is anything to go by, it seems that the city may be on track to establish itself as a robust fashion player on the world stage and a leading destination for cultural and creative events in Asia. Previously known as Hong Kong Fashion Design Week, the Hong Kong Fashion Fest takes place from 20 November to 4 December 2024, featuring a slew of curated events such as exhibitions promoting Chinese designs and brands, summits and panel talks with leading industry experts, and fashion presentations showcasing couture designers as well as up-and-coming Asian designers.
Highlights of the festival include Shanghai Tang‘s 30th anniversary retrospective exhibition, A Journey of Rediscovery: 30 Years of Shanghai Tang, held at PMQ. Running till 15 December, the exhibition explores the past, present and future of Hong Kong’s homegrown luxury brand, spanning its launch in 1994 by Sir David Tang, to its glittering ties to Hollywood through the years, a rare look at its archival pieces, and the expansion of the Shanghai Tang universe to a global lifestyle brand. The brand also partnered with digital fashion purveyor FabriX for a series of digital experiences: from an AR “dressing room” to try on iconic pieces from Shanghai Tang, to an immersive trip down memory lane that takes the audience back to the site of the brand’s first store on Pedder Street.
Another highlight of the festival is the Motifx Exhibition & Pattern Book Showcase at K11 Musea’s Gold Ball. A platform created to bring historical Chinese patterns and design elements into modern life, Motifx invites young designers, experts and educators to interpret rich visual elements from the East—Dunhuang’s vivid cave paintings, or murals found at historic Chinese temples, for example—and breathe new life into them by turning them into lifestyle objects ranging from homeware, to clothes, to accessories. A book has also been published to commemorate the occasion, with contributions from the Hong Kong Design Institute’s students and local Hong Kong design professionals.
To drive home Hong Kong’s cultural relevance as a hub bringing together fashion designers from the East and West, Virtuose: The Artistry of Couture is another tentpole event that will see four couture designers—Charles de Vilmorin, Cheney Chan, Benchellal and Kay Kwok—come together to present their work in a couture fashion show and intimate trunk shows throughout the week, culminating in an exhibition where select pieces from their collections will be on display to the public. Workshops will also pull back the curtain on the rarefied world of couture, and give an insight into the creative process of fashioning couture pieces.
Other key moments in the festival include Fashion Asia Hong Kong, which comprises a summit that sees industry leaders from fashion, media, retail and beyond come together for panel discussions on topics impacting the industry in Asia and the wider world, as well as the hotly anticipated annual unveiling of the regions’s rising fashion stars at the 10 Asian Designers To Watch showcase, held at the Clockenflap Music & Arts Festival.
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