As editor of Vogue China, Angelica Cheung is the most influential woman in fashion right now. Harriet Quick meets her for Stylist

"It’s nice that people say that I am one of the most powerful women in fashion,” says Angelica Cheung from her Vogue office in Beijing, humming with 45 staff and dotted with Philippe Starck for Kartell ‘Ghost’ chairs. “But I don’t think that way. It is to do with the influence of the magazine. China is such a big market with so many women who are just waking up to fashion and secondly, it is to do with the fact that we set a totally new bar with Vogue, the pace, the attitude, the fashion and, to a lesser extent, because we have become a spokesperson for what Chinese women like.

Within her eight years as editor-in-chief of Vogue China, Cheung has grown a readership of 1.06 million women (Chinese magazines do not undergo audited circulation as they do in the UK so there are no exact sales figures to date). The September 2005 launch issue featuring cover star Du Juan, the first Chinese supermodel, was a sell out and went into reprint twice. And over the years Cheung has scored many more successes and firsts championing Chinese models (Du Juan, Liu Wen) and designers (Huishan Zhang – see page 122 – and Uma Wang) who have since achieved global success. As luxury brand advertising has increased, Vogue China’s thumping issues might contain 300 pages of editorial (by comparison British Vogue’s March 2012 edition contained 150). And Cheung produces 16 issues a year – four special collections issues on top of the monthly magazine to keep up with the demand for advertising.

In Vogue: Angelica Cheung