Such is the kind of happening that Liu has made her mission to facilitate in order to promote Chinese fashion designers and set them up for success. Labelhood is a singular breed of fashion incubator-meets-retailer-meets-fashion week festival. The organisation’s primary mission since its official launch in 2016 is to uplift Chinese design, and it does so through a uniquely set up multi-layered platform.
“I was always curious about how to market fashion brands, and how designers create businesses with their names and become the businesses as well as the human being,” says Liu. “I love fashion, but, I think most importantly, I love people.”
“She is a supporter, a connector, an old friend, and a facilitator for young and upcoming talents,” says Xander Zhou of Liu. “What is really incredible is that, because the industry here is only around 20 years old, Tasha has had an ability to work around the barriers that are in place in other markets,” adds A Magazine editor-in-chief Blake Abbie, who is half Chinese and works with Labelhood, Liu, and many of her designers on a consultancy basis. “She has taken her business background and applied it to an industry that was in its early stages to partner with these brands and find them resources, and then invest in them.”
Labelhood and Liu’s mission is not just to incubate and sell brands but also to export designers’ creativity. Liu is aware of the way in which Chinese design and production are seen around the globe, and the taboo behind the “Made in China” label is secret to no one in the industry. This is why Liu will organise visits like Brocart’s (past visitors also include Lorenzo Hadar, founder of H. Lorenzo and Andreina Longhi of communications agency Attila&Co) and pop-ups abroad. Earlier this year, she organised a Lunar New Year pop-up at Harrods in London, having designers create exclusive products.
“She is the global business card of Chinese fashion,” says Miss Lv.
Fashion East on steroids
Labelhood is, first and foremost, a talent incubator. Like Fashion East in London or what was MADE in New York, it discovers talents and supports their growth, connecting them with one another across the industry — photographers, stylists, producers — to help them with the production of their runway shows or presentations. It will also host a showroom during the week, which brands will participate in for four to six seasons before moving on to Shanghai Fashion Week’s myriad of other options. Labelhood also hosts such goings on, with its fashion week home base set up right in Rockbund, a collection of historic buildings in the former European concession, just a stone’s throw from the Bund waterfront in central Shanghai.