Chinese models making history at Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

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Chinese models making history at Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

2017-11-20 17:40 Last Updated At：17:40

The annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show captivates the world like no other fashion event. An estimated 800 million people around the world are set to watch.

This year, more than 55 models are in Shanghai for the lingerie brand’s first show in Asia taking place on November 20. It will be broadcast around the world the following Monday.

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Victoria’s Secret has cast a record eight Chinese models among the most diverse lineup in the show’s history. Some of them are established names and faces like Wen Liu and Ming Xi, but for many, the historical strut down the runway marks their global introduction. CGTN Digital is in Shanghai to take in the fashion phenomenon.

Meet the Chinese models

Estelle Chen

The second time around proved successful for Estelle Chen, who was selected for this year’s Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. She tried out last year but didn’t make the cut. The 19-year-old has catapulted into high fashion via the Elite Model Look competition. Her credits include the Louis Vuitton cruise shows.

Her parents both hail from Wenzhou, a city on China’s east coast, south of Shanghai. Chen was born in China but raised in France. She said that even though her dad comes from a fully Chinese background, he taught her more about French culture, while her mom schooled her in Chinese heritage. Chen said she feels like she grew up with both cultures because she returned to China every year for one or two months.

Most first-timers use the show to boost their global profiles and further their modeling careers, but Chen has different plans. She wants to study economics at the prestigious HEC Paris once she’s walked in Shanghai. Chen has spoken frankly about the inadequate representation of Asian models on the catwalk. In 2016, she took part in Instagram’s #RunwayForAll campaign, which focuses on promoting models from diverse backgrounds.

Sui He

Sui He became the second Chinese model to walk the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in 2011. She has done every show since. Sui He is the first East Asian model to open a Ralph Lauren runway show. She also appeared on the cover of W Magazine as a relative unknown. In 2012, she became the face of Shiseido makeup, making her the first Chinese model to represent the Japanese beauty giant.

Sui He’s breakthrough season was Fall/Winter 2011. Due to her success, she was named one of New York Magazine's Fall 2011 Top 10 Faces. At the age of 17, while a junior in high school, Sui He entered a Chinese modeling contest and won. Afterwards, she signed with China's Bentley Culture Development Company in Beijing. She was also part of the cast of the 2015 film “You Are My Sunshine”.

Xiao Wen Ju

Xiao Wen Ju was the first model of Chinese descent to be the face of Marc Jacobs.

After gaining attention with her appearance on the cover of Harper's Bazaar China in May 2010, she debuted in New York City at the Fall Honor show. Since then, she has graced runways around the world for designers including Shiatzy Chen, Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Prada.

In addition, Wen Ju was picked for Lane Crawford's F/W 11 campaign, along with other top Chinese models like Ming Xi and Shu Pei. She has also appeared on the cover of Vogue China and Numero China.

A native from northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Xiao Wen Ju appeared on the cover of Vogue Italia in 2015. In 2016, she became a face of L’Oreal. She walked in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show last year, becoming only the fifth Asian model to do so after Liu Wen, He Sui, Shu Pei and Ming Xi.

Wen Liu

Wen Liu is the first model of East Asian descent to walk the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, the first spokesmodel of East Asian descent for Estée Lauder and the first Asian model to ever make Forbes Magazine's annual highest-paid models list.

In 2012, The New York Times named Liu "China’s first bona fide supermodel." In 2017, she became the first Chinese model to ever appear on the front cover of American Vogue. In an April 2014 article about social media's rise in the fashion industry, Vogue remarked that she had "by far, the biggest social-media audience of any model."

Throughout her career, Liu has challenged issues of diversity in the fashion industry. In 2009, she made headlines on her Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show bow. The next year, she became the first Asian model to land an Esteé Lauder cosmetics campaign. An only child, Liu was born into a working-class family in Yongzhou, Hunan.

Shu Pei

Born in Kaifeng, Henan, model and actress Shu Pei signed to Next Management in 2007. Her breakthrough season came in September 2008, when she walked for Christian Dior, Hussein Chalayan, John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood. That September, she appeared in a Vogue China editorial and has since secured three Vogue China covers.

In 2011, Pei became the face of Vera Wang, and her first Victoria's Secret show was in 2012. She has also embarked on an acting career, and in March 2015 shot her first film, “Oh My God,” directed by Leste Chen and produced by Zhang Ziyi.

The new mom will make her return to Victoria’s Secret catwalk this year. In January, she and her partner Edison Chen welcomed a baby daughter.

Ming Xi

Ming Xi’s professional modeling career started in 2009 after she attended a TV competition. Her international modeling career took off in 2011 after she walked her first well-known runway show for Givenchy. In the same year, she modeled the Givenchy ready-to-wear collection and appeared as the face of Givenchy’s Fall/Winter publicity advertising campaign. Ming Xi also appeared in Victoria's Secret Fashion Shows in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Now regarded as one of the world’s top supermodels, her services are highly sought-after. Two years after she graduated from college, she participated in the Elite Model Look competition, held by the leading Elite Model Management agency. Xi ranked third. Shortly after the contest, she was offered a contract with Givenchy.

The 2017 Victoria’s Secret show is a homecoming for Xi, who was raised in Shanghai.

Xin Xie

Xin Xie is from Guangdong Province and now splits her time between New York, London, and Guangdong. The 22-year-old up-and-comer has already walked the Miu Miu Resort 2016 show and appeared in editorials for Vogue China and Vogue Me.

As it stands, Xie’s Instagram followers number just over 4,000, a figure that pales in comparison to fellow Victoria’s Secret models like Gigi Hadid (36 million) and Taylor Hill (9 million).

For Xie, the show might just be the boost she needs to make her a global name. This will be her first time walking in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.

Mystery Model

One lucky reality show contestant is getting the ultimate prize. As the soon-to-be-revealed winner of "Road to the Runway China" online reality show, she will be strutting down the runway at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.

The mystery model will make her professional debut on the runway for fashion's biggest night. Will she be the modeling industry's next rising star? Time will tell.

In a miniature world, climate change and environmental issues loom large

HAMBURG, Germany (AP) — Watching his dad make a brand-new miniature train car look old, placing the wooden parts to weather in the sun and rain, pulled Peter Martínez into the world of miniatures. He recalls his father, who made model trains mostly for collectors or hobbyists, wondering why anyone would pay him to do what he thought was the most fun part of the hobby.

“But luckily they did, and we were able to build an industry around it," Martínez said.

The Argentine family business, United Scale Arts, is now partnering with Germany's Miniatur Wunderland, a museum that houses the largest model train set in the world, to develop new exhibits depicting parts of South America, including the Amazon rainforest and Atacama Desert. But with miniature power comes great responsibility — and both Martínez’s company and the museum are determined that the miniature world reflect both the good and bad of the real thing.

So alongside the perfectly shaded rocks and trees, they depict poverty, crime and environmental degradation. In the exhibits already running in Hamburg, built by a team that has grown over the years to hundreds of people, it means that tiny trains pull tiny coal cars into a mining town, but also, on a city bridge, a tiny semitruck hauls the tiny giant blade of a wind turbine.

And the builders say it means the new models won't shy away from illustrating real life in the Amazon: they will include scenes of illegal mining, deforestation and forest fires.

“These are social problems that exist in the real world, and we need to show them also in the models, because I think it’s important not to make this kind of idealistic view of the world, but also to show reality and to use these tools as a learning experience for everyone that visits the Wunderland,” Martínez said.

Visitors have a lot to see in the multistory warehouse that is Wunderland. From Las Vegas to Miami Beach, from Rio de Janeiro to Monaco, cars zoom past tiny replicas of buildings as throngs of people, with heads smaller than your fingernail, mill about famous landmarks.

Cargo ships dominate the glasslike surface of a tiny bay as they chug in with their deliveries. Planes taxi down the runway of an airport. And of course, plenty of trains roll through every landscape to the delight of kids and adults alike.

Twin brothers Gerrit and Frederik Braun joined with business partner Stephan Hertz and took out a loan to create Miniatur Wunderland after they left the nightclub business. Frederik had visited a model railroad shop in Zurich, called his brother and suggested they create their own — but a whole lot bigger.

Gerrit laughed at first. Unlike his brother, he loved the nightclub. But he eventually agreed and now can't imagine doing anything else.

“It’s a dream come true that we sit here 25 years later, and playing all day,” he said, chuckling.

But he takes the work seriously. The brothers came up with most of the initial plans for the museum within two weeks, Gerrit said. It's grown in scope and ambition since then.

“Ten years ago, we were looking to the old section and saw the real world has changed in this time,” Gerrit said. They realized they needed to update the exhibits to include technologies like electric cars, wind turbines, nuclear power and more. “I have children, and I believe in global warming and I’m sure that we have done it ... So if you believe in this, and you have the possibility to show the images, why not?"

There's no one process by which the designers and model builders decide what to include in their models, but as they have added to the collection, they haven't shied away from depicting technology or from political or contentious topics.

In 2017, when Donald Trump was first elected U.S. president, the Wunderland put up a model concrete wall with barbed wire around the section with the American landscapes. In 2019, Wunderland launched a scathing exhibit on the treatment of animals in large-scale farming that sparked deep criticism from the agriculture industry.

Next came weeks of conversation, farm visits and the eventual launch of a special exhibit aimed at depicting the current reality of pig farming, featuring industrial production and organic farms.

They're usually striving to depict the world exactly as it is. But building models also reminds Gerrit that “you can build the world a little bit like you want,” he said.

It’s an art form that can have practical purposes but also can capture longing, nostalgia or other feelings about a particular time or place, said Kit Maxwell, a curator with The Art Institute of Chicago, which houses the popular Thorne Miniature Rooms.

“One of the most compelling things about these rooms is that you imagine yourself in them," he said.

Aware of that power of imagination,Martínez also said builders have to be careful not to unfairly cast countries in a bad light as they seek to include imperfections.

“You need to kind of balance, when you show the bad things in contrast with the good things, that they are not overdone or they are not too much,” he said. “You want also that the people that go there have a good time and not get really sad after seeing this model.”

Follow Melina Walling on X @MelinaWalling and Bluesky @melinawalling.bsky.social.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.