Asian supermodels cashing in,
Liu Wen’s arrival in Forbes’ top 10 of supermodels reflects growth in Chinese luxury purchasing power
There are rarely any surprises when Forbes brings out its top-10 list of the world’s highest-earning supermodels.
The 2013 list, published last week, featured the Brazilian Gisele Bundchen in the top position — a spot she has occupied for the past seven years — with earnings of $44 million. She was followed, as always, by a handful of lingerie models including Miranda Kerr and Adriana Lima, as well as Kate Moss, who has earnings of nearly $6 million.
But this year there were two new names that illustrate how rapidly growing markets in China, the Far East and South America are making magazines, campaigns and catwalks more ethnically diverse than ever before.
Joan Smalls, the Puerto Rican model who became the first Latina ambassador for Estee Lauder in 2010, appears at No 8. More notable still is the addition of Chinese supermodel Liu Wen, who, in five years, has risen from an unknown teenager to become the fifth highest-earning model in the world thanks to campaigns with Calvin Klein and Hugo Boss.
It is the first time an Asian model has appeared in the annual Forbes list — but then Liu Wen is used to firsts. The 25-year-old was the first Asian model hired as a face of Estee Lauder, and the first hired as a Victoria’s Secret Angel.
Her career is also notable because it highlights how much the fashion industry is responding to the spending power of China’s luxury consumers.
The daughter of a construction worker, Liu Wen grew up in Hunan province, best known as the birthplace of Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong and for producing tea, rice and cotton. After winning a modelling contest (she entered because she wanted a computer, the first prize), she moved at age 18 to Beijing, just as the city was being transformed with luxury malls and new publications, such as Vogue China.
The following year, she was discovered at a fitting by a casting director, and by 2008 she had won her first major catwalk appearance, for Burberry in Milan.
Within a year she had moved to New York, speaking just a few words of English — she taught herself by watching Gossip Girl and comparing Harry Potter books in Chinese and English. Two years later, when American Vogue was charting the rise of the Asian supermodel, Liu Wen played the starring role.
Her rapid rise — along with fellow models Fei Fei Sun and Sui He — is in sync with the emergence of China as the biggest growth market for luxury products. The country’s exploding fashion industry is expected to triple in size to more than $209 billion by 2020.
Currently half of all global luxury purchases are being made by label-loving shoppers from China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia. The power of China’s affluent consumers is apparent at international collections where, in five years, the Chinese sections have swelled exponentially.
It’s also why brands such as Fendi and Louis Vuitton have staged fashion extravaganzas in China — the latter even shipped an entire train from Paris to Shanghai to recreate its autumn-winter 2012 fashion show.
British department stores such as Harrods and Selfridges have installed UnionPay terminals — China’s only bank card organization — in their shops.
The Chinese visitor to Britain spends an average of 1,700 pounds ($2,800), three times more than the typical overseas visitor.
British publications are wooing the Chinese, too. Elle has just published its biannual Elle Collections magazine, with a shopping guide in Mandarin. The magazine’s bookings editor, Rosie Bendandi, has closely followed the rise of the Chinese supermodel. “In the past you would have been hard-pressed to find just one show using a Chinese girl, but this season 18 Asian girls walked in Milan, and over 30 in Paris.”
The huge purchasing power of the Far East, says Bendandi, is responsible for the growth.
“It’s the major drive for the change in catwalk and advertising casting. In an effort to reach the Asian audience, the industry is employing girls who the customer can identify with.”
Five years ago, international catwalks were marked in their resolute “whiteness.” According to Women’s Wear Daily, in 2007 every third show in New York used exclusively “white” models. While designers are rushing to discover Asians, it doesn’t mean more diverse runways. Earlier this year, Prada cast a black model for the first time in two decades.