Though 'Made in China' has unflattering connotations for some, Uma Wang hopes to change that.

The 38-year-old, one of the country's emerging fashion-design talents, hails from Hebei, a northern-Chinese province bordering Beijing. Ms. Wang has headlined Shanghai Fashion Week, been featured in Vogue and opened a flagship store last year in Shanghai's affluent Xintiandi neighborhood.

Her studio, tucked in a quiet compound in a westernsuburb of Shanghai, is seemingly a world away. There she's busy preparing for Paris, where she'll show in the fall. She spoke with The Wall Street Journal about growing up in the countryside, her fashion influences and basketball.

There was no fashion when I was a little girl, so I never dreamt about anything having to do with it. My parents did not really have enough money to buy clothes for me. Every month, they only got paid 30 yuan (roughly $5) each from the hospital. I always remember getting old, second-hand clothes from another family in our village.

In middle school, I was on our summer party committee, designing dance costumes. People started telling me, 'You should become a fashion designer in the future,' so I thought, 'Oh, maybe I should follow.' When I look back at my yearbooks, everyone had written, 'I hope you become a great designer.' When I came to Shanghai to go to China Textile University, I really started to get professional" target="_blank" title="a.职业的 n.自由职业">professional training and have this dream of being a designer.

My parents are both doctors. Everyone's a doctor. It's only me doing something else. My brother is 36, a surgeon