The oriental class of 2010 at Graduate Fashion Week

Prêt-à-rapporter: Britain's latest fashion recruits add a refreshing hint of Asia; Cadbury woos chic chocaholics; London is the workplace for fledgling designers.

Korean designers Rok Hwang (left), who has been hired by Celine, and Jung Sun Lee whose collection has been bought by Harrods

The oriental class of 2010

It’s Graduate Fashion Week, but fashion students have been graduating since Central Saint Martins’s MA show in March. Sitting at these shows, you try to patch together future trends from what you see – and this year, I’m beginning to see a huge trend. Every time I glance down to check who has done what, another Asian-sounding name jumps out. Ten or more years ago, it was the Japanese who were coming to learn in London. Now, as far as foreign students go, it is aspiring Chinese and Korean designers who are being turned out by this country’s fashion schools in unmissable numbers.

Cadbury's new Flake advert as directed by Baillie Walsh and styled by Antony Price

Only five years ago, I remember fashion people in the West speculating that perhaps China and the new booming Asian economies might “one day” produce a designer worth taking notice of – after all, they were revving up their clothing factories to bring fast, cheap fashion to the world. Now, to judge from our top fashion institutions, that day has come faster than anyone anticipated.

At Central Saint Martins, it is more noticeable than ever. This is hardly surprising. The acknowledged world standard-bearer for excellence in fashion education, Central Saint Martins can recruit high-paying foreign students (an international student pays a total of £36,750 in fees, as opposed to £9,870 for UK and EU students). This year, the top prizes and accolades in both the MA and BA degree courses have been swept by Chinese and Koreans. At the MA level, Jung Sun Lee’s minimal jersey tailoring has been snapped up by Harrods, where it will be sold this autumn, while Rok Hwang has been hired to work at Céline. They are both from South Korea. At the BA show, a Chinese-born designer, Yi Fang Wan, scooped the L’Oréal Professionnel prize after impressing judges with her sensitive collection of softly coloured silks and linen.

And there are many more designers from Asian backgrounds working through the system. Some of them don’t have Asian names, but identify themselves as such, like Kathleen Connors, a shoe designer at the Royal College of Art (RCA), whose work is so stunning it gave me goosebumps. Connors, who was born in Hong Kong, and is half-British and half-Chinese, has the finesse and imagination to become the next Manolo Blahnik – that is, if a major European luxury label doesn’t snap her up. So good is she, I wouldn’t be surprised if a headhunter war breaks out over her at the gala on Thursday. (The RCA is another gold-standard fashion institution, where a two-year Master’s degree costs a foreign student £48,000 in fees.)

All this makes me wonder whether, within a couple of years, London will be like New York, where Alexander Wang, Jason Wu, Phillip Lim, Joseph Altuzarra and Derek Lam – all with Asian backgrounds – have swiftly taken over as the 21st-century new guard of American fashion.

Typically, their success is down to talent, education, work ethic and family backing – and the ability to manufacture at reasonable prices in Chinese factories. If the British-educated talent follow their American counterparts, they’ll stay in this country rather than moving to Shanghai or Hong Kong to run their businesses, though. Being a “young London designer” is a high-prestige label, and showing in London means you can be under a world spotlight, even as a beginner. If so, and they can eventually grow as British-based powerhouses and local employers, then all to the good.

Like everything else, though, this phenomenon is a reflection of the economy. I notice also the dwindling numbers of British-born, working-class fashion talents who are making it through to a Master’s degree. Put it this way: with the grant system long gone, could today’s John Galliano (son of a plumber) or Alexander McQueen (son of a taxi driver)even think of affording that kind of education?

Only the flakiest, creamiest fabric goes into Cadbury’s latest creation

I know a bit about the new Cadbury’s Flake advert and its incredible twirling airborne chiffon dress, with its metres of fan-pleated tendrils. The film broke on television last night and is being lined up to cause what Cadbury hopes will be a fashion sensation. I lived through part of the making of this spectacular piece of engineering because every time I called on Antony Price, who was making a dress for me, multi-metres of yellow chiffon had proliferated in his hall, corridor, front room and studio.

“It’s a jellyfish! A Portuguese man-of-war meets Scarlett O’Hara! And they want three of them,” he would intone, before heading off to Pinewood to see the things shot in mid-air, with wind-machines and a pyrotechnics crew which weighted the last dress with exploding powder canisters to turn it purple (the wrapper logo, you see).

The commercial was shot by Baillie Walsh, who was commissioned to capture the magic of the famous Kate Moss hologram he’d made for Alexander McQueen.

Price, one of Britain’s past masters of couture, was the only man with the technical wizardry to push the concept to HD-film dimensions, inventing those pleated frills and calculating how to make this fragile structure undulate like some giant sea creature. This £3.5 million production is hardly in the tradition of “Only the flakiest…”, but Cadbury aims to snag women’s imaginations.

Plans are afoot to put the dress at the epicentre of a free event, with 200 free pleated and ruffled dresses (not by Price) to be given away. Frankly, Kraft, the American parent company, which closed down Cadbury’s manufacturing in the UK, needs to make it up to the British. Will free dresses and the temptation of the 99 do it?

Ruffles & Folds, 28-32 St Christopher’s Place, London W1, June 23-28

A capital place for fashion jobs

It never ceases to amaze me how an idée fixe can stick around long after it’s out of date. One such idea is that London fashion is edgy and rebellious (it’s actually sophisticated now). Another is the bewailing of the fact that there are so few significant fashion industry employers to keep graduates from leaving the country. Well, counter to everything else we might suspect about the economic situation, that, too, has changed for the better in the past half-decade, at least in London.

A quick tally of major designer names operating in the city is headed by Burberry, which employs more than 1,000 people in its Horseferry Road headquarters.

Christopher Bailey tells me: “Half my design team came in as interns. We build people, long-term.” Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, Aquascutum, Pringle and Mulberry have large studios and showrooms in the capital and Céline, Bally and Tom Ford have all committed to basing their design functions in town.

Another plus-point few have computed is how advanced and exciting London’s internet fashion businesses are – and the kind of specialised talents they are taking on. Net-a-Porter, in its new dream premises in Westfield, is an employer of 400 smart young women and men, while across town, Asos has a staff of 550. Fashion is on the lookout for bright, young qualified minds and you don’t need a straight fashion background for it either: Bailey says he has just hired someone from Xbox.