Rarity Value

In today's WSJ there is an article "Model's Chinese Looks Were an Instant Hit Everywhere but China", it's about the rise of a traditional-Chinese-looking model Du Juan:

When Du Juan entered a modeling contest in China in 2002, the 5-foot-11 Shanghai beauty wasn't favored to win. She looked too traditionally Chinese.....With her stereotypical Chinese looks -- almond-shaped eyes and porcelain skin -- Ms. Du just didn't seem to stand out.

Ms. Du is the face of a paradox in the fashion industry as it expands its global reach. In China, where the luxury-goods market has recently exploded, many consumers have come to associate Western fashion brands with the European and American models -- Caucasian mainly -- who appear in their ads and in fashion magazines. As a result, "Chinese people tend to like models with Western-ish looks: wide eyes, high nose and slender figure," says Su Mang, editor in chief of the Chinese edition of Harper's Bazaar. "The Western look is rare and different from what we see every day."

In Europe and the U.S., by contrast, China, and all things Chinese, have suddenly become fashionable. "China is a trend," says David Wolfe, a creative director at the Doneger Group in New York. "We're on the brink of seeing our fascination with China move mainstream." The buzz is growing as fashion industry executives see China as not only intriguing and mysterious to Westerners, but also a center of manufacturing and a promising market.

Ms. Du's big break came last October, when she appeared on the cover of French Vogue for a special issue on China......The discovery of Ms. Du spread fast......Asian faces had been a rarity on Western runways, in magazine features and ad campaigns....

The economics behind this phenomena is rarity value, or simple supply and demand. For that matter the pretty girls in China(usually associated with some elements of Westernish looking) should stay put in China and be better off this way. With the same token, the plain ones would have more incentive to go abroad.