China has reinvigorated the European fashion industry in the last two decades, through both its huge manufacturing capacity and its ever-growing purchasing power among its burgeoning middle class and 400 million millennials. 

More recently, Chinese fashion designers have had an increasing influence on new trends. Indeed, they were in the spotlight at this year's London Fashion Week, showcasing their Autumn/Winter 2020 collections. 

Yuhan Wang, a fashion designer from Weihai in China, opened Fashion Week on the Friday, showing her latest collection, which was inspired by Victorian rituals of mourning and their accompanying funeral ceremonies. Wang's collections are often inspired by traditional Chinese notions of femininity and their connections to western culture. Wang has also been shortlisted for the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers, which is open to designers under 40 all over the world.    

Other Chinese designers glimmering at this year's London Fashion Week include Chinese outwear brand Bosideng and Huishan Zhang, a London-based, Chinese-born designer who launched his luxury fashion brand in 2011. 

Zhang trained at the House of Dior in Paris and worked in leather goods and Dior's Haute Couture Atelier. He has created his own signature style, which fuses his Chinese heritage with western influences to create sophisticated and feminine designs.

For his Autumn/Winter 2020 collection, he referenced 1990s city life and glamor, incorporating sequins, big shoulders and cocktail dresses with intricate flower designs and sparkling gloves. 

Zhang, who studied at London's Central Saint Martins, has previously been named one of the BoF 500 as one of the foremost people shaping the global fashion industry. Alongside the multiple awards that he has won, such as the International Chinese Designer of the Year at the Elle China Style Awards in 2014, his couture 'Dragon Dress' was selected by London's V&A Museum to become a permanent piece in the T.T. Tsui Gallery. He was the first Chinese contemporary designer to receive this honor.  

Zhang told CGTN Europe about how his heritage plays a role in inspiring his designs and how each collection acts as a journal of his life. 

"As a Chinese designer, this upbringing is always in the DNA of my brand," he said. "It's something that's more in the aesthetic of the brand and the way I see things also and combine them together. It's not really a particular way of doing it, it just comes very naturally into the design. 

"I use the design process as a point of journal that I take through my travels, going back and forwards to China and also traveling in Europe. I think it's really nice recording what I see at that time: every time you have a show, you're presenting what you have been thinking half your time." 

Speaking about being at London Fashion Week, Zhang said "It's always exciting to come a show in London: you feel really comfortable and you feel that you can be really creative in this city. I think it's always good to have an international stage." 

Lu Mei is a London-based label established in 2016 by husband-and-wife team Hunter Mei and Lu Lu. Their modernized jackets and innovative outwear are crafted in China at the founders' family-run factory. 

Lu Mei's designs center around the modern empowered woman, and look to combine classic sportswear with reinvention. Ethical fashion is also a core principle of the company. 

"Lu Mei combines some of the world's best resources," Hunter Mei told CGTN Europe. "We have our family factory where they have all of the expertise, and in London we have all these buzzing creative scenes. It's a good combination and a connection between west and east and it's presented in a very modern, very easy way.

"To us, it is important thinking about what kind of mindset an empowered woman will have. We don't really define our customers by age or by location, it's more about how they think about themselves, how they want to make choices. So in the collection we have different elements - sometimes like a very oversized shape, or very nice printed material, crazy colors, color blocking - it's all there to give people options, helping them make good strong choices where it reflects their personality." 

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Mei also spoke about Chinese millennials as a consumer market, saying "It's very important for brands to educate their consumers and connect with their customers."

"Currently, there a lot of old views on Chinese designers or manufacturers and I think the new wave would be new creativities coming along. It doesn't matter if it's from China or from the UK, we have people from different countries, different kinds of cultural backgrounds. I think the clash of different cultures really fuels the creative scene."

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