“Beautiful!” “Marvelous!” On the night of June 11, at the Hofburg Palace of Vienna, the curtain of a fashion show jointly presented by four young designers from China was drawn close. Amid torrents of applauses, designers were surrounded by buyers; some asked for their business cards and some demanded directly the price of the garment and where to purchase. One man designer was squarely asked whether he could sell his accessory bag on the spot.  

This Fashion Show entitled 2011 Chinese Fashion Showcase Vienna was jointly sponsored by CFLAC and Austrian  Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture, and undertaken by the Organizing Committee of Shanghai International Fashion Culture Festival, which was the reciprocal visit to the Austrian avant-garde fashion show of six designers that was held at Shanghai International Fashion Center in May, 2010. 

Dai Ziyi, deputy secretary-general of the Organizing Committee of Shanghai International Fashion Culture Festival, general manager of Shanghai International Fashion and Apparel Center Co., Ltd used Chinese idiom “The channel is readily formed just as water comes.” to describe this activity. He frankly remarked that but for long-term and consistent communication and cooperation as the foreshadowing beforehand, it would have been a great challenge to head fifteen models and four designers to present a fashion show abroad. Certainly, more importantly, it was a contemporary Chinese avant-garde fashion, in which the contemporary creativity level of China was on a par with that of other countries. 

As for Zhou Xiaowen, Zhang Na, Zhai Yanxin and Hua Juan, the four designers participating in the show, their joys were far beyond the sense of honor as Chinese designers. Just as Qin Zhigang, vice president of CFLAC commented in his address, the fashion show from China was expected to be “a visual window which enables Austrian audiences to know and appreciate China.” Dai Ziyi held the same profound understanding, “For those Austrian friends who have few chances to communicate with Chinese closely, they have seen one aspect of China in 2007, while observing a totally different aspect in 2011. We are not saying that we have attained the top level of the world, but we adapt ourselves to the development trend of the world fashion. The competence of our designers has been greatly improved. So, this show does not mean the beginning or the ending.”