0 Mencyclopaedia: Bosideng

On the corner of Oxford Street and South Molton Street, at the site of what used to be an especially ropey boozer called The Hog in the Pound, is a rather amazing new piece of architecture. It cost £35 million to build the triangular, bronze-clad structure that looks like a scaled-down, 21st-century version of New York's Gridiron building - and £20 million more to buy out the Hog's freehold. For an unknown company setting up its first shop in Britain, that's an extraordinary amount to spend. But for Bosideng, that £55 million is probably peanuts.

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For Bosideng is one of the largest fashion companies in China, and far, far, far bigger than anything we have here. As well as producing clothes for many international labels, such as North Face, it has an own-brand network of 10,000 stores in China. Its speciality is the manufacture of down jackets. According to Bosideng's new British designers, Nick Holland and Ash Gangotra, the company produces 450 million ducks' worth of jackets each year. "When we visited the company's museum they said they sold 3.5 million jackets of one particular style in one particular colour," says Holland. "That's just telephone numbers."

Bosideng's founder Gao Dekang

Bosideng was founded by Gao Dekang. "I started out with no money and eight sewing machines," he recalled recently. "I had to take buses to carry my merchandise to Shanghai, but I was often denied entry because they didn't want a plain peasant like me with bundles of goods and a pungent odour of sweat." Now, 26 years on, Dekang is spearheading China's first fashion brand expansion into the West.

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It's well worth a look at Bosideng's 500-item collection, particularly because it seems at least 30 per cent underpriced; high-quality down jackets with flashes of Yorkshire-milled Abraham Moon Donegal go for £160, cashmere jumpers with pigskin elbow patches for £190, and a Melton wool quilted jacket with suede piping for £200.

Holland, an excellent tailor, has made some really swanky deconstructed jackets in top quality materials that go for around half the price they'd command if labelled with a high fashion name. There is a great shoe collaboration with Cheaney, the Church family-owned English shoemaker, and some Jermyn Street quality leather goods made by Danes and Hathaway of Walsall.

Quilted jacket, £160, Bosideng; bosidenglondon.com

South Molton Street offers an entirely new line, all Holland and Gangotra designed, named Bosideng London. Dekang's plan seems to be to establish Bosideng as an internationally recognised label - there are plans for more shops in New York, Milan and beyond.

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But as the biggest market of all is in China, what is the point of Chinese company selling itself abroad? Oddly, the answer just might be to sell more clothes at home: for as Chinese tourists thronging Bond Street demonstrate, they have a voracious appetite for expensive foreign fashion. If they see Bosideng as a home-grown luxury equivalent, then its fortunes - but not those of its ducks - can only increase. If the plan works, expect more Chinese companies to make an appearance on Britain's high streets.

Whatever the strategy, two things are for sure; Dekang has one of the funkiest flats in London (the top floor of that new building is for his personal use). And right now, Bosideng is selling some of the best-value, high-quality men's clothing anywhere in London. Although I will rather miss the Hog.

Read more of Luke Leitch's columns