The Country That Makes Fashion but Doesn't Own It

Vietnam produces more than half of Nike's footwear worldwide. Yet while manufacturing nations continue to invest in factories, labour and export capacity, several other economies are pursuing a different path: combining public resources with private commercial networks to bring homegrown designer brands to international markets. From the showrooms of Paris to the aisles of COTERIE New York, the question is no longer simply how much clothing a country can produce, but whether it can create the conditions for its own businesses to control their brands, reach global markets and capture more of the commercial value generated by the products they make.

During Paris Fashion Week, the meeting rooms and salons of prestigious hotels around Place Vendôme and Rue de Rivoli are transformed into temporary showrooms. Evening gowns, tailored jackets, handbags and ready-to-wear collections are presented to buyers arriving from New York, London, Dubai, Kuwait and Doha. Most of these encounters take place discreetly, far from the spectacle of the runway, without crowds of photographers, celebrities in the front row or extravagant outfits designed to provoke conversation on social media. Instead, there are designers, sales representatives, carefully arranged sample collections and commercial negotiations that may determine which boutiques will stock a particular brand in the coming season. Yet within this seemingly straightforward world of wholesale transactions, a significant development is taking place. Not every brand arrives independently. Increasingly, designers are appearing through collective export programmes, showrooms and representation networks closely associated with their countries of origin.

A similar pattern can be observed at COTERIE New York, where international womenswear brands gather to meet American retailers. Korean designers may appear under the coordination of a common commercial organisation; Italian labels participate through initiatives organised by their national trade-promotion agency; and Romanian brands are represented across different showrooms while benefiting from broader internationalisation programmes. At first glance, everyone is doing essentially the same thing: placing garments in front of people who might buy them. Yet behind these collections lie very different commercial structures and ways of organising resources. One company may independently finance its exhibition space, recruit an agent and approach prospective buyers, while another benefits from a network of commercial relationships and institutional expertise developed over many years. Such differences affect not only the cost of attending a trade fair, but potentially how long a small brand can afford to remain present in an international market before securing sustainable orders.

These observations lead to a larger question about industrial policy. For decades, nations have invested in industrial parks, ports, roads, energy infrastructure and logistics systems to attract manufacturers and facilitate exports. Yet producing goods represents only one stage of international commerce. To bring products bearing their own names into overseas markets, businesses also need distribution networks, access to buyers, commercial expertise and a sustained presence that smaller manufacturers often struggle to establish independently. If governments can deliberately develop the infrastructure required for manufacturing, could they also help organise another kind of infrastructure, one that enables domestic brands to find customers and gradually acquire greater commercial influence?

From Manufacturing to Market Power

According to Nike's annual report for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2026, factories in Vietnam produced approximately 52 per cent of the company's footwear and 34 per cent of its apparel worldwide. These figures make Vietnam Nike's largest manufacturing location in both categories, reflecting the position the Southeast Asian country has established within the supply chain of one of the world's most influential sportswear companies. Behind these numbers lie decades of investment in manufacturing facilities, technology, workforce development, quality management and the capacity to fulfil large orders under demanding technical specifications and delivery schedules. This is a substantial industrial achievement, generating employment, production capabilities and export earnings for Vietnam's economy.

Yet producing the majority of Nike's footwear does not mean that businesses operating in Vietnam decide how much those shoes will sell for, how they will be marketed or which distribution channels will carry them. Design, product development, brand management, marketing and sales are organised within a commercial structure controlled primarily by Nike, while most finished products are manufactured by independent contractors. This does not mean that the difference between factory prices and retail prices becomes pure profit for Nike. The company must invest in research, product development, advertising, sports sponsorship, retail operations and logistics, while assuming considerable commercial risks. Manufacturers, too, accumulate technological expertise and valuable economic capabilities. Nevertheless, this division of responsibilities exposes a fundamental distinction between making a product and controlling the system through which that product is positioned, distributed and commercialised.

For decades, attracting international manufacturing orders has been an important route towards industrialisation for developing economies. Vietnam and Bangladesh have both demonstrated their ability to build production systems serving global markets, while many domestic suppliers have progressed beyond basic cut-make-trim operations to sourcing materials, developing samples and undertaking more technically demanding manufacturing activities. Yet assuming greater responsibility within production does not necessarily translate into retaining a higher proportion of profits. In their 2026 study, Rethinking Economic Upgrading in Apparel Global Value Chains, Felix Maile and Lindsay Whitfield argue that apparel suppliers can improve their capabilities, take on additional responsibilities and increase the value of the services they provide without necessarily securing a corresponding improvement in their share of profits. Their findings point towards a deeper problem: a country can become increasingly proficient at manufacturing for the world without automatically gaining control over markets or the power to determine the final commercial value of its products.

Building international brands is often presented as the solution, but brand ownership requires a different set of capabilities from manufacturing. A company may manage factories exceptionally well while lacking experience in consumer research, developing collections for specific markets, pricing, marketing or maintaining relationships with international retailers. These capabilities cannot be acquired merely by changing the name on a garment's label. If domestic businesses are to move beyond supplying products towards owning brands and market relationships, it is necessary to examine the conditions that allow a label to survive, develop and compete beyond the country in which it originated.

Romania's Long Game

Romania offers a particularly revealing case, because support for domestic designer brands seeking access to international markets did not begin with the showroom seasons of recent years. According to an investigation published by the specialist publication Dialog Textil in February 2019, Romania allocated approximately 12 million lei, equivalent to €2.6 million at the time, in 2018 to support international promotional activities for its textile and design industries. Nearly 5 million lei of this amount was directed towards promoting fashion designers. What matters is not simply the expenditure, but also the involvement of industry representatives, with businesses and designers joining forces to establish collective representation and advocate for support programmes. The example suggests that brand-promotion initiatives can emerge through cooperation between private-sector needs and public-policy resources, rather than exclusively through top-down administrative decisions.

In September 2019, fourteen Romanian fashion companies participated in New York Women's Fashion under an export-promotion programme organised through cooperation between Romania's trade authorities and the FIT industry association. Contemporary Romanian reporting placed the public funding involved at approximately 1.1 million lei, with the objective of creating opportunities for businesses to meet international distributors and buyers. By 2024, Romania's export-support framework continued to identify the overseas promotion of products and services developed under companies' own brands as an explicit objective. The inclusion of proprietary brands in these policy documents is significant because it reflects an ambition distinct from simply increasing the volume of goods manufactured and exported under foreign labels. At least at the level of stated objectives, policy was seeking to support businesses that owned the designs, products and commercial identities they brought to market.

The experience of OUI-DA FÉE makes it possible to examine this development through the history of an individual brand. Showroom records archived by Modem Online document OUI-DA FÉE's participation with Pirnia Collections at the Westin Paris–Vendôme in 2023, its continued presence over subsequent seasons and its inclusion in Pirnia's roster at the Hôtel d'Évreux in October 2025. By March 2026, however, the brand was listed at Barocco Showroom in the Hôtel Le Meurice alongside several other Romanian designers. It also participated in Designers at The Essex in New York in February 2026, an event featuring multiple Romanian brands under a programme reported to have government support. This history does not demonstrate that OUI-DA FÉE received direct government funding for every season it attended, nor is there sufficient evidence to establish that its change of showroom resulted from a particular policy decision. Nevertheless, viewed alongside export-promotion programmes dating back to at least 2018, the records show how one Romanian label sustained its international commercial presence over several years while participating in an environment where collective forms of representation were becoming increasingly visible.

In October 2025, Modem Online reported that 39 Romanian designers were participating in trade fairs and showrooms during Paris Fashion Week. By September 2026, 31 Romanian collections were being presented in Milan through programmes reported to have Romanian government support. These brands were not necessarily gathered in the same room; rather, they were distributed across multiple showrooms according to their products and target buyers. That arrangement reveals an important distinction. Collective export promotion does not require companies to occupy a single physical location, because what they share may instead be funding, support services, commercial networks and the conditions necessary to enter foreign markets. The presence of multiple labels under a broader national identity may gradually encourage international buyers to recognise Romania as a source of designer fashion, although the actual impact of this effect on revenues and brand awareness still requires further research.

Continuity matters because building an international market rarely happens within a single selling season. A collection may attract a buyer's attention at its first presentation, but interest is not the same as an order, and an initial order does not necessarily lead to a lasting commercial relationship. Buyers need to examine garments, assess quality, evaluate wholesale pricing, delivery schedules and size availability, and subsequently observe customer responses, return rates and consistency across future collections. For smaller companies, the costs of showrooms, sample transportation, travel, lookbooks and agency relationships arise early, while revenue may arrive considerably later, if it arrives at all. If an export-promotion programme provides support for only one season, the investment may end before a business has completed the process of establishing commercial trust.

Seen from this perspective, support sustained over several years can mean something different from a subsidy for attending an event. Public institutions may be absorbing a portion of the costs incurred while businesses develop commercial relationships, in the expectation that those relationships could eventually become assets capable of generating revenue. Romania's experience also demonstrates the limitations of this approach. Industry publications have questioned the economic returns from public money spent bringing designers to prestigious venues in Paris, while reports in 2026 highlighted interruptions or delays in financial support amid budget restrictions. A programme lasting many years is not automatically a successful one, especially without evidence of repeat buyers, realised revenue and the ability of participating brands to finance their own international presence after subsidies end. These controversies, however, reinforce the need to evaluate brand internationalisation as a long-term investment process, rather than measuring its success solely by the number of collections displayed during each fashion season.

The Infrastructure Nobody Sees

Turkey provides a different example, in which private showroom businesses play a prominent role in organising access to international markets. Showapp was founded in Istanbul in 2014 by Sahra Katoğlu with the aim of introducing Turkish designer brands to buyers overseas. According to the company's own description, its activities extend beyond providing exhibition space to include collection development, product positioning, pricing strategies, buyer relations and wholesale sales support. Its Paris showroom rosters over successive seasons have featured Turkish labels such as Nihan Peker, Mehtap Elaidi and other designers, illustrating how a commercial intermediary can accumulate specialist knowledge of brands sharing a common national origin. For an emerging label, working with an organisation that already possesses buyer relationships and market expertise may reduce the cost of learning, experimentation and building a distribution network from the beginning.

Showapp has not publicly provided clear evidence that it receives direct government funding, and it would therefore be inappropriate to claim that the Turkish government finances the company's operations. Turkey does, however, maintain policies designed to support brand internationalisation, including the TURQUALITY programme and various export-promotion initiatives organised through industry associations. The development of a private enterprise such as Showapp and the existence of public policies supporting internationally competitive brands are not mutually exclusive. A commercial ecosystem may emerge through several complementary layers: public policy reduces certain barriers, industry associations coordinate resources, and private agents or showrooms establish specific relationships with buyers. What requires deeper investigation is whether these activities reinforce one another and whether such coordination creates commercial advantages that individual brands would struggle to develop independently.

South Korea offers an example with a more explicitly documented institutional structure. In February 2025, the Korea Fashion Industry Association brought six brands to COTERIE New York through its LEDOME showroom programme, supported by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. According to figures published by the association, the initiative reached approximately 300 buyers, facilitated more than 130 business meetings and reported roughly $300,000 in orders and potential commercial opportunities. These figures should not be treated as final revenues collected following completed deliveries, but they illustrate how the organisers sought to measure commercial outcomes rather than simply counting the number of participating designers. More significantly, LEDOME developed an online B2B showroom system intended to support product presentations, documentation, communication and the maintenance of commercial relationships after trade fairs. The programme was therefore not merely bringing designers into the same room as potential buyers; it was also attempting to assist with the work required after those introductions had taken place.

Italy, despite possessing a highly developed international fashion industry, continues to organise collective export-promotion initiatives for small and medium-sized enterprises. At COTERIE New York in February 2026, the Italian Trade Agency, or ICE, offered a participation programme for companies presenting Made in Italy products, with a standard contribution of €380 per square metre, equivalent to €3,420 for a nine-square-metre stand before applicable taxes. Notably, ICE did not require every Italian brand to exhibit in a single national pavilion, instead allowing the event organiser to place businesses within areas suited to their respective product categories. This approach shows that collective support does not necessarily involve presenting different brands in a uniform manner. Public institutions may provide organisational assistance, communications and participation services while preserving the individual positioning and commercial requirements of each label.

In Spain, the national trade-promotion agency ICEX worked with the Asociación Creadores de Moda de España, or ACME, to support companies participating in B2B showrooms during Paris Fashion Week in late September and early October 2026. These initiatives operate alongside a bridal and occasionwear ecosystem that already attracts international buyers, particularly through Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week. The Korean, Italian, Spanish and Turkish approaches differ in their objectives, scale and funding structures. Yet considered together, they suggest a common principle: rather than leaving every small business to overcome the full range of difficulties associated with entering foreign markets, public and private organisations are making certain commercial capabilities available across groups of brands.

Factories require electricity, water, transportation, storage and logistics to manufacture and deliver their products. A brand seeking to establish itself internationally needs those things too, but also requires consumer knowledge, representation, buyer networks, negotiating expertise, commercial documentation and distribution relationships. Most of these capabilities do not appear as physical infrastructure in the way that ports or industrial parks do, yet they can determine whether a product ever finds a buyer. If the former have long been recognised as essential infrastructure for industrialisation, should the latter also be considered a form of commercial infrastructure for the creative economy? Such a question does not imply that governments should own showrooms or become clothing retailers. It suggests instead that countries might invest in shared conditions that allow domestic businesses to reduce the cost of entering international markets, while leaving responsibility for product development and competitiveness with the companies themselves.

A Hundred Brands Instead of One Giant

A common assumption in discussions about developing national fashion industries is that success requires producing a local equivalent of Zara, Nike or Louis Vuitton. Yet the experiences of Romania, Turkey, Spain and Lebanon suggest another possibility: a country may develop numerous specialised brands, each serving a relatively small but internationally accessible segment. Eveningwear, bridal and couture-inspired labels generally do not operate according to the production volumes of sportswear giants or fast-fashion retailers. They may sell fewer garments, rely more heavily on specialised craftsmanship and serve customers with particular requirements in the United States, the Middle East or Europe. This does not guarantee superior profit margins, since sample development, pattern-making, embellishment, inventory and customer acquisition can be expensive. It does, however, offer a different commercial model in which design, specialisation and relationships with customers can matter more than the ability to manufacture millions of identical products.

Imagine a fashion industry supporting one hundred eveningwear, bridal and designer ready-to-wear brands, each serving a distinct market segment. None would necessarily become a billion-dollar corporation. But if enough of them developed sustainable businesses, the wider ecosystem could generate demand for pattern-making studios, textile suppliers, embroidery workshops, photography studios, commercial agents and logistics providers. Their activities might also contribute to the accumulation of technical expertise, market knowledge and relationships from which subsequent businesses could learn. Yet the number of brands should never be treated as an indicator of success in itself. One hundred consistently unprofitable companies do not necessarily create more economic value than a single efficient manufacturer, nor does repeated participation in international showrooms demonstrate sustainable commercial performance. The relevant question is whether these businesses can accumulate profits, intellectual property, design capabilities and durable market relationships over time.

This perspective also challenges the assumption that increasing the value captured by the textile industry necessarily requires manufacturers to become consumer brands. Producers possessing proprietary textile technologies, specialised weaving techniques, research capabilities or product-development expertise that international brands find difficult to replace may also possess considerable economic bargaining power. A designer label may control customer relationships, while another business owns an industrial capability on which several brands depend. These models generate different kinds of assets, and there is no reason to assume that one is inherently more valuable than the other in every context. The strategic challenge lies in identifying which capabilities a country or business can realistically develop, and from which it can retain meaningful economic benefits.

Moreover, bringing a brand into international markets does not automatically mean the company has gained control of its entire value chain. A designer may escape dependence on manufacturing orders placed by a multinational corporation only to become dependent on an agent, showroom, department store or marketplace. If all buyer relationships are controlled by the sales representative, the label may encounter difficulties when the agency agreement ends. If revenue is concentrated among a handful of retailers, the company may remain vulnerable to pressure over pricing and commercial terms. Accordingly, the long-term objective of brand-internationalisation programmes should extend beyond helping businesses obtain their first orders. They should also create opportunities for companies to develop market-research skills, manage buyer relationships, negotiate contracts, maintain production quality and establish a business capable of surviving after its initial support disappears.

What Vietnam Has Yet to Decide

Vietnam does not lack creative designers, skilled garment workers, pattern-making technicians or businesses accustomed to meeting international standards. Nor is the country starting from nothing in trade promotion and brand development: the Vietnam National Brand Programme, international trade fairs and overseas trade offices have existed for many years. The question worth investigating is whether these mechanisms have been structured closely enough around the commercial realities of designer fashion businesses, particularly smaller labels seeking to develop international wholesale distribution. Not every brand requires an elaborate runway presentation, and not every major promotional campaign attracts buyers capable of placing orders. For an eveningwear business, a more useful intervention might be access to an appropriate showroom, introductions to retailers with genuine demand, a sustained presence long enough for relationships to develop, and assistance with commercial skills that the founder has not yet acquired.

A programme designed around these needs could select businesses meeting particular product and production standards, support their participation in suitable international showrooms over a defined sequence of seasons, and subsequently evaluate performance through buyer contacts, completed orders, repeat purchases and the ability to finance their own participation. The distinction lies in treating such initiatives as investments in market-access capabilities rather than expenditures intended primarily to secure visibility. Programmes would nevertheless require transparent selection procedures, limits on the duration of support and reasonable co-investment obligations to avoid creating brands that can operate only through subsidies. Governments cannot guarantee that a collection will appeal to buyers, nor should they replace the market's process of selecting competitive businesses. What they can potentially do is reduce certain fixed costs and commercial barriers that individual small enterprises would struggle to overcome independently, allowing more companies the opportunity to test their products and develop international capabilities.

None of this provides a reason for Vietnam to reduce investment in industrial manufacturing in order to redirect resources towards couture or eveningwear. Mass manufacturing remains an important pillar of employment, productivity and integration into global supply chains, while the development of designer brands represents only one among several possible routes towards retaining additional value. Other opportunities include materials research, advanced manufacturing technologies, specialised technical capabilities, logistics and commercial platforms. The challenge is not to select a single model of development, but to organise an industrial economy with sufficient diversity of capabilities to create value across different parts of the supply chain. A country can continue manufacturing footwear for Nike and garments for international companies while also helping domestic designer brands identify markets for their own products, provided that each investment is assessed against its actual economic and social returns.

For decades, the success of textile and apparel development policies has largely been measured through employment, manufacturing capacity, export revenues and the ability to attract orders from foreign customers. These indicators remain essential, but they may no longer be sufficient to describe all the development choices available to the industry. Alongside measuring how many products bearing the words Made in Vietnam appear on international retail shelves, policymakers might begin asking how many Vietnamese-owned fashion brands are actively sought out by overseas retailers, how many sustain repeat orders across multiple seasons, and how many companies have genuinely accumulated intellectual property, commercial capabilities and customer relationships in major markets. Such measures would not diminish the contribution of the existing manufacturing economy. Rather, they could reveal another dimension of industrial development that export figures alone do not fully capture.

Romania's experience does not demonstrate that showroom subsidies are a guaranteed formula for creating an internationally competitive fashion industry. The country has itself faced disputes over budgets, the effectiveness of promotion and the continuity of public support. Yet its history of bringing designers to Paris, Milan and New York over many years shows that brand development can be approached as a long-term process of building commercial capabilities, rather than simply the private ambition of individual designers. The experiences of South Korea, Italy, Spain and Turkey further demonstrate that there are different ways to organise this process, ranging from government-supported trade programmes to professionally managed private showroom networks. No single model is automatically suitable for every country, but their existence opens a worthwhile discussion about the kinds of investment that may help domestic businesses enter international markets more effectively.

Perhaps the most important distinction concerns how industrial capability itself is defined. A country with excellent factories does not necessarily possess a strong ecosystem of internationally recognised brands, just as a country with talented designers may lack the commercial infrastructure required to bring their products to global consumers. Manufacturing, creativity and distribution are different activities, even though they can reinforce one another and contribute to the same economy. If previous decades were largely devoted to creating the conditions that encouraged foreign businesses to manufacture within national borders, the coming decades may present another possibility: developing the conditions that encourage international buyers to place orders directly with domestically owned brands. The question is not simply how many additional designers a country can produce, but whether it can organise a system in which design, manufacturing and commerce develop together into businesses capable of competing over the long term.

We have spent decades building the conditions that make the world want to manufacture in Vietnam. Perhaps it is time to consider whether an equally long-term vision should be devoted to building the conditions that make the world want to buy Vietnamese brands. This question does not require abandoning the industrial advantages already accumulated, nor does it assume that small designer labels represent the only future for fashion. It merely raises the possibility that a country can develop both the capacity to manufacture goods for the world and the capacity to bring products bearing its own brands to international markets. If that possibility is worth pursuing, the challenge extends beyond investing in machinery or training more designers. It involves developing the commercial systems capable of connecting domestic creativity, products and manufacturing expertise with markets willing to pay for their value.