Italian fashion with Chinese characteristics

Updated: 2014-03-28 08:43

By Mariella Radaelli (China Daily Europe)

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 Italian fashion with Chinese characteristics

A Marisfrolg store at a shopping center in Beijing. Photos provided to China Daily

 Italian fashion with Chinese characteristics

Mariuccia Mandelli, founder of the Italian brand Krizia SpA, says she is delighted to have found in Zhu Chongyun a successor to her work.

Milan brand passes baton to Shenzhen company and will follow in its founder's footsteps

Mariuccia Mandelli gained a worldwide reputation over 60 years for creating chic yet easy-to-wear, dynamic clothes under the name Krizia. Now the Italian designer, 89, is retiring, and she is entrusting a Chinese women's clothes maker to carry on her life's work.

Krizia SpA of Milan, one of Italy's leading ready-to-wear brands, is being sold to Shenzhen Marisfrolg Fashion Co Ltd, which is prominent in the Asian market. In buying Krizia, the Chinese company is taking another step in its global expansion. The deal is expected to be completed within weeks.

Mandelli has been a fashion designer and entrepreneur all her working life, and says she recognizes an innovator when she sees one. Zhu Chongyun, the Chinese businesswoman who runs Shenzhen Marisfrolg, could well be the perfect successor.

Zhu is one of China's wealthiest female entrepreneurs, with assets of more than $500 million, says Forbes. She was ranked 349 on its China Rich List in 2012.

Zhu created her financial empire through creativity in fashion and design, and Mandelli says she has established a good relationship with her.

"My team and I are delighted to have found in Zhu a successor to our work. She has strength and talent and is willing to lead Krizia's international growth. This is good for everyone. Zhu is an amazing talent. I am so pleased to have met her. I found myself in complete harmony with her," Mandelli says.

Krizia was founded in 1954 by Mandelli and her husband, Aldo Pinto. Ten years later the label made its catwalk debut at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.

Italian fashion with Chinese characteristics

Krizia is named after the protagonist of an unfinished dialogue by Plato, who squandered his fortune buying lavish jewelry and dresses for the woman in his life. The company soon established a reputation for exploring new developments in fabric technology.

Its designs have always been inspired by art, architecture, cinema, theater and the circus. Mandelli's hot pants made their initial runway appearance in 1971. At the end of the 70s she introduced pleats used in unusual ways, beginning with an accordion-pleated raincoat. In her knitwear collections she created a veritable menagerie, ranging from leopard prints and zebra stripes to tapestries of the great cats.

Her work was acclaimed from the very start and she has always seen her company as a kind of extended family. Its heydays were the 1990s.

Some of the most renowned museums, such as the Guggenheim in New York, the Musee des Arts et de la Mode in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Tokyo, have all had exhibitions of Krizia's clothes.

However, in recent years the label has struggled with poor revenue, and last year its earnings fell to 10 million euros, compared with an annual 255 million euros during the 90s.

With no children to pass the business on to or an heir apparent in the company itself, the formerly thriving business was a shadow of what it had once been, and it became clear that it would have to be sold.

Shenzhen Marisfrolg is understood to be paying $35 million (25.5 million euros) for it.

Although Krizia will be under Chinese ownership, Zhu stresses that the label will continue to be Italian through and through.

Zhu will be both CEO and creative director and will debut as Krizia's designer in Milan Fashion Week (autumn/winter collection) next February.

Zhu says her aims are broadly in line with those of the former Krizia management. Krizia entered the Chinese market 20 years ago and Zhu hopes to use it to expand her ready-to-wear business. Zhu says she plans to invest heavily in developing the Krizia label.

She wants to revamp the brand over the next three years by opening flagship stores in Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Marisfrolg will also reopen Krizia boutiques in Europe, Japan and the United States.

Shenzhen Marisfrolg Fashion Co Ltd, established in 1993, is one of China's top 100 fashion companies in terms of sales revenue, with a big market share in the high-end women's ready-to-wear sector.

It had turnover of 2.56 billion yuan ($420 million) last year, operating more than 400 outlets in top-end shopping malls and department stores in China, South Korea, Singapore and Macao.

Under its new owners, the Krizia label will follow in Mandelli's footsteps, Zhu says.

"My mission is to preserve her ideas of fashion, her visionary research and her immense creativity. I am a great admirer of Mandelli's pioneering work in the world of ready-to-wear and proud to be taking up the baton to help drive the Krizia legend, and business, to even greater heights."

Contact the writer at marielrad@gmail.com

China Daily

(China Daily European Weekly 03/28/2014 page19)