Fashion designer Yang Fang makes origami an essential element in every collection her brand has produced. [Photo provided to China Daily]

"I had never seen so many people from the fashion industry than in that single week," Yang says. In China, Yang was witness to "radical change" in the public mindset: Fashion-oriented women no longer took pride in owning or carrying a Birkin, but found it embarrassing to wear the same dress as, say, colleagues, or even strangers on the street.

Yang's elegant, feminine, and slightly dressy collections happened to fill the gap between super-expensive pieces from luxury brands and mass-produced items from fast fashion lines. A silk top with a floral print and hand-crafted petals－the bestseller from her 2015 spring summer collection, is priced at about 5,000 yuan ($781).

"The last thing we need is a so-called fast fashion or high street fashion brand, which is unfriendly to the environment, of low quality, and is manufactured in very poor conditions," says Yang. Her studio, a spacious apartment in downtown Shanghai, has 15 or so seamstresses dressed in white robes, quietly and patiently hand-folding fabrics. It is, says Yang, "slow fashion", creating pieces that will: "still be 'in' in 10 years' time".

The team of seamstresses also help create tailor-made evening gowns ordered by Yang's customers, which now account for 40 percent of the business. The business was started by Yang and her husband, a French businessman who used to work as an executive in a foreign corporate in Shanghai.

A frequent guest, as well as participant, of Paris Fashion Week, Yang's collections can be found in New York, Tokyo, the Middle East and of course, Shanghai.

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Getting ready to strike a pose