Western models, it seems, are all over China these days: on department store display ads, in catalogues for clothing brands, on billboards, in commercials and on the runways at fashion shows. They are blue-eyed blondes, sultry eastern European brunettes and hunks with tans and six-pack abs selling products from jeans to underwear.
Even some mannequins have Western features.
So it begs the question: why would a country of 1.3 billion people - roughly half of them female - have to import blondes and redheads to market products to a nation of black-haired consumers?
The answer's simple: as China's fashion industry grows, it needs a variety of girls.
"It just reflects the growth of the fashion industry," said Angelica Cheung, editor of Vogue China. "If it's a local Chinese brand, they want to show their clothes look good on Westerners, especially brands that want to sell overseas."
Other factors include the relative lack of professional training among Chinese models and that brands want to be known as trendy or yangqi - literally "foreign-style" in Putonghua. The alternative, using only mainland models, is interpreted as making the brand come off as tuqi, or countrified.
"My clients feel that their products will look international if they use foreign models,'" said Ou Haibin, head of the Yuanjin Modeling Agency in Shenzhen.
In the end, it's all about companies jostling against each other. The bottom line is selling more products.
