LONDON — Leading global names, including Maison Margiela, Vera Wang, Apple, and Adidas Originals, are set to participate in the fall 2026 edition of Shanghai Fashion Week, alongside local power brands and buzzy emerging talents, from Wednesday to April 1.
Under the theme “Ascending Through Design,” the upcoming Shanghai Fashion Week is about supporting and elevating those who have been running a brand for around a decade to reach new heights, while showcasing Shanghai’s broader economic and cultural development.
The fall 2026 edition will span Shanghai’s seven districts, featuring runway shows, installations and consumer-facing events.
At the main venue in Xintiandi, the runway space Red Hall is getting a facelift with a new scrolling facade that aims to give the site a younger appeal. The smaller Blue Hall on site will be configured as a flexible show space that designers can play with to fit their concepts.
Markgong, spring 2026
Courtesy
The Shanghai-based label Hply will kick off the showcase on Wednesday evening and the fashion brand Ep Yaying will cap off the runway shows on March 31 with a collection that centers on contemporary takes on traditional aesthetics.
Independent Chinese designers continue to form the backbone of the schedule. The Xintiandi venue will feature labels such as Feng Chen Wang, Short Sentence, 8on8, Jacques Wei, Comme Moi, Xuzhi, and Susan Fang.
Labelhood, the emerging talent support platform, will provide space for brands, including Oude Waag, WMWM, Garcon by Gcogcn, Ao Yes, Yirantian, Markgong, and Shushu/Tong, and, as usual, Samuel Gui Yang, one of the most celebrated independent fashion voices in today’s China, will show off-schedule.
Backstage at the fall 1995 Martin Margiela show.
Anders Edström/Courtesy of Maison Margiela
International participation is on the rise this season, as observed on Shanghai Fashion Week’s event calendar.
As reported, Maison Margiela is putting an exclamation point at the tail end of fashion week in Shanghai, staging its fall 2026 fashion show there on April Fool’s Day and kicking off a multifaceted “brand moment” spanning nearly two weeks and flagpole events across four Chinese cities.
Under the title “Maison Margiela/Folders,” the brand moment includes:
- An exhibition in Shanghai dedicated to Artisanal couture pieces from 1989 through to 2025, when Glenn Martens made his runway debut at the house.
- An exhibition in Beijing delving into anonymity, a key code of the house stemming back to the founder Martin Margiela’s Greta Garbo-like ways, and the face-obscuring masks that have been a feature of the brand since the Belgian maverick arrived on the international fashion scene.
- An exhibition in Chengdu showcasing the split-toe Tabi shoe collections of 10 Maison Margiela enthusiasts.
- A two-day immersive experience in Shenzhen where locals can bring in their own garments and transform them with white paint, as the house has been doing to chairs, lamps, you-name-it since 1988.
Adidas Originals will host a lounge from Thursday to March 29, showcasing its archive and new sneaker concepts. Apple will debut a collaboration with a Chinese designer as part of its wide-ranging 50th anniversary celebration. The Shanghai-based designer-collective brand Fabrique will host a pop-up for its latest collaboration with Vera Wang.
Other international brands showing in Shanghai this season include Lsoul and White Ant from Vietnam, Ych and Jarret from South Korea, Stivanano from Italy, Marie Elie Paris from France, Maison Amory Rin Label from the U.S., and Only from Denmark. South Korean brand Amomento will mark its 10th anniversary with a special presentation on Huaihai Road, as well.
Finalists of the inaugural New Wave Fashion Awards.
Courtesy
The fall edition of Shanghai Fashion Week will welcome the winners of the inaugural New Wave Fashion Awards.
Launched by the Shanghai Fashion Designer Association, a relaunched initiative to fuel the next stage of growth for Chinese fashion designers, with financial backing from Dior and Moncler, six designer brands — including Chen Sifan, Angus Chiang, Moto Guo, 8on8, Mayali, and Feng Chen Wang — will present their comprehensive brand expressions and creative ideas via holistic physical experiences to a group of industry judges including members of the senior leadership teams at Dior and Moncler, designer Uma Wang and Labelhood founder Tasha Liu.
The concept of the New Wave Fashion Awards was introduced last fall in a bid to turbocharge local creativity, nurture creative talent, and identify homegrown creative directors of tomorrow. The award is looking to judge designers’ capabilities in areas such as product, aesthetics, space, narrative, and brand structure.
Lv Xiaolei, executive vice president of the Shanghai Fashion Designer Association and secretary general of the Shanghai Fashion Week Organizing Committee, said the award is part of the association’s ambition to build “a long-term, systematic, and future-oriented training mechanism to help China’s new generation of creative talents achieve leaps in continuous practice and move towards a clearer and more internationally oriented development direction.”
Kering CRAFT, which stands for Creative Residency for Artisanship, Fashion, and Technology, will also reveal its shortlisted participants in the coming days.
Billed as an industry first, the initiative is designed to spotlight, accelerate, and elevate the next generation of Chinese creative talent and to foster dialogue and exchange between China and Europe in design, craftsmanship, innovation, and future business models. Kering said the partnership reflects its long-term commitment to shared prosperity and sustainable growth across the global fashion ecosystem.