Made in China, Finished in France?
Chinese workers on TikTok reclaim their place in luxury production
If you’re extremely online, you’ve likely come across TikTok videos of Chinese workers exposing the brands—both luxury and mass-tige—they manufacture goods for. In one instance, a woman warns that “80% of Chanel cosmetics are made in China and cost only $5.” In another example, a man holds up a pair of Lululemon leggings, saying it costs $8 to make yet sells for $100. Elsewhere from the queue, a video shows shelves of Louis Vuitton and Dior bags, also made in China. And the list goes on.
“I’m doubtful that these [TikTok] claims are legitimate,” Bernstein analyst Luca Solca told Business of Fashion. Solca is either in denial or protecting his moneyed clientèle because his comment reads as naive at best. It’s hilarious because it is now well-known that an overwhelming number of luxury brands produce their goods in China. The country, with its large labor force, efficient infrastructure and state-of-the-art technology, ranks among the top manufacturing hubs in the world.
In reality, luxury fashion brands began moving their production to China in the ‘70s.
chronicles this shift in her landmark book Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster published in 2007. In the chapter “It’s in the Bag,” she visits a factory in Guangdong Province where she gets the opportunity to see and hold the leather goods on the condition of anonymity. “Yes, luxury handbags are made in China. Top brands. Brands that you carry,” she writes. Recounting the lengths brands go to to cover their tracks, she continues:Each brand made the manufacturer sign a confidentiality agreement stipulating that he could not reveal the fact that he produced their products in China. Furthermore, the manufacturer doesn't let the competition know who else he is producing. When the representatives come to the factory, they are led directly to the section working on their goods, and they talk only to the team in charge of their goods. It's as complicated as keeping a slew of mistresses.
We learn that Coach is on the list, although the company has never kept its manufacturing in China a secret, Thomas says. In fact, the brand experienced double-digit growth every quarter from 2001 to 2006 as a result (culminating in $2.1 billion in sales that year).
Other leather goods brands—inspired by Coach’s success—followed suit. And even though the executives outright denied it, there was evidence that LVMH and Prada were contracting factories in China (“Prada had already started producing leather goods in China by May 2005,” Thomas writes.)
Twenty years later, luxury brands still refuse to acknowledge it (they declined BoF’s requests for comment). It’s one thing to read these reports from Western journalists but it’s a different story to hear it directly from the Chinese manufacturers on TikTok. None of this is news to educated consumers of course, but it adds the first-person perspectives that were previously shrouded in NDAs. Likely as a response to Trump’s punitive tariffs, these manufacturers are openly debunking the “made in Europe” label myths. Oh you thought your charm-embellished $4,000 brand-name bag wasn’t made in China? Well guess what!
“Welcome to the real world,” one man says in a viral video that has since been deleted. “You have been misled and poisoned by the [marketing] campaign of those luxury brands for too long.”
Indeed, luxury brands have spent a fortune distancing their product value from the far-flung, low-wage realities of their production hubs. To re-quote Deluxe:
If there is one thing that has changed in luxury in the last 30 years, it is the single-minded focus on profitability. In the old days, when luxury brands were privately held companies, owners cared about making a profit, but the primary objective in-house was to produce the finest products possible. Arnault and his fellow tycoons have shifted the focus on what the product is to what it represents.
To achieve this, they enhance the “timelessness” as Arnault likes to say by trumpeting a company’s heritage; hire a hip young designer to give it a sexy, modern edge; strengthen the branding by streamlining the name (Christian Dior has simply become Dior) and splashing the logo on everything; and advertise the entire package relentlessly to spread the gospel to the masses.
There is a conversation to be had about the anti-Chinese sentiment that defines the new tariff policy, as well as the racism embedded in brands’ refusal to openly acknowledge their partnership with China. Of course luxury brands (and virtually the whole world) produce goods in China. Why wouldn’t they? But because these executives see an admission as a threat to their storied reputation, they have come to propagate the view that “Made in China” means low quality. But it bears repeating: just because something is made in China doesn’t mean the quality is low.
“Quality operates on a broad spectrum so the same country that produces whatever SHEIN or Temu sells can also deliver top-tier quality leather goods, and everything in between.”
In fact, if we go back to Coach as an example, it was the exceptional quality that Chinese factories delivered in the early 2000s that influenced other brands to make the switch. While Coach has since expanded production to other parts of the globe, the quality of its leather goods is still something people rave about (most notably the leather expert Volkan Yilmaz, otherwise known as Tanner Leatherstein). Assuming a lot of it is still being made in China—which it likely is—it’s safe to say the quality has kept up nicely.
Still, there is a lot of nuance to this conversation and it’s worth acknowledging how the trillion-dollar counterfeit market (that is also in large part a product of Chinese labor) fits into all these claims. I don’t think anyone was expecting THE Hermès to be named in any of the videos—some of the Chinese manufacturers claim that the company employs them to create their Birkin bags. Here, we’re no longer having a conversation about quality or luxury but about authenticity. As Deluxe reports, Hermès is the undisputed exception—the only luxury behemoth that resisted the move to China. The fashion house (which recently surpassed its former suitor LVMH in market value) stuck with its limited distribution, choosing instead to invest in its labor force (opening The École Hermès des savoir-faire and training new generations of craftsmen). Hermès artisans can train up to 5 years before they are able to make a Birkin or Kelly, and as far as where the leather is sourced, the brand has its own tanneries for quality control. “For [Pierre-Alexis] Dumas, it was a question of integrity,” Thomas writes. “Unlike at Hermès, where bags were crafted by hand one at a time,” she continues. “At Vuitton, the workers were turning them out assembly line style in twenty-bag batches.”
That was then, I can hear skeptics say. But have you ever heard anyone complain about the quality of the brand’s crown jewels. Anyone?
Ultimately, the conversation—while re-asserting China’s technical know-how and its crucial role in oiling the fashion engine—devolved into another sales campaign. Hear me out. Instead of encouraging people to buy these European luxury goods from China (which to me only refocused the Western gaze), I wish the manufacturers had broadcasted the ingenuity of local markets, responsible homegrown Chinese designers in particular. It would’ve counteracted the “Made in China” narrative, further adding nuance and showing a different side of Chinese apparel production that isn’t fraught with quality suspicions and human rights accusations. Many of these homegrown labels are interviewed in this fantastic 2016 States of Undress documentary, China’s Shift Towards Homegrown Brands.
It would’ve also been productive to have a conversation about quality—how to spot it, what counts as good leather, “does good leather scratch easily?”, “how does good leather wear over time?” Few people are better positioned to educate consumers than the very Chinese workers who take credit for the still well-made European luxury bags. As much as we are growing skeptical of luxury prices, we are not necessarily becoming better at discerning (and subsequently investing in) quality.
It’s about time we made fashion education accessible on a large scale as this may be our only way out of mindless consumption.
What are your thoughts? Let’s discuss in the comments.
Until next time,
Shelcy
Great read! Your point about the missed opportunity to spotlight homegrown Chinese designers is so spot on
Thank you!