Shanghai has stopped catching up: minimalism is over, colour and emotion are back
The week closed with Glenn Martens’s Maison Margiela show. But the real story is not a single trend — it is a change of posture: the city no longer reacts to global fashion, it works inside it.
Shanghai Fashion Week’s autumn/winter 2026 season ended fittingly, with a Maison Margiela show by Glenn Martens. The moment underlined two things at once: the designer’s growing resonance in China and a broader transformation of the market as a whole.
The season took place against a still-fragile macroeconomic backdrop, but the mood on the ground was noticeably more constructive. This is not a reactive bounce: Shanghai is entering a phase of consolidation, characterised by clearer creative direction, more disciplined buyer behaviour and a more clearly articulated local design identity.
The shift is visible in the ecosystem around the shows too. A larger group of Chinese designers has returned to the official schedule — and with mature, fully worked-out collections. The presence of international buyers and media continued to strengthen: global attention to Shanghai as a creative and commercial platform is returning.
Aesthetically, the pendulum is swinging away from the restrained minimalism of recent seasons. In its place comes a deliberate bet on refinement, emotional expressiveness and cultural specificity. The codes now emerging align ever better both with the mood of the local shopper and with the global fashion agenda.
The reasons for the previous wave are clear enough. The rise of the “clean fit” in China was no accident: it was a product of its time — a combination of economic caution, the influence of global luxury’s quiet codes and the algorithmic aesthetic of platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, where restrained, logo-free clothing proved both desirable and easy to replicate.
But that uniformity began to pall. As Ontimeshow founder Yeli Gu observed, the appetite for restraint has given way to a demand for something more expressive: femininity, romanticism and emotional texture have returned to the centre of the design language.
The observation is echoed outside China. “For a while everything was about minimalism and quiet luxury — in luxury and in the contemporary segment alike. But I think that is over for now. We want more authenticity, femininity and romanticism,” says Marine Humo, merchandising manager at Printemps.
The point here is not any particular trend but a change of posture. Shanghai no longer simply reacts to the global fashion system. It is beginning to work inside it, with greater clarity and self-definition.