(FORTUNE Magazine) – Don't look to Europe to find the hottest new fashion designers. They're here: Asian Americans are stealing the show, and their ranks are growing faster than cotton prices.

Gemma Kahng, Vera Wang, Han Feng, Josie Natori, Vivienne Tam, and Anna Sui aren't just darlings of the fashion press. They are scoring big with apparel retailers, who desperately need fresh threads to get them out of the longest fashion drought in decades. The lack of hit fashion ideas has hurt retailers such as the Limited and the Broadway who are stuck with look-alike apparel that is keeping women away from the stores in droves. "These Asian designers are great individualists, and their clothes are modern and spirited," says Nicole Fischelis, a vice president and fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue, which carries most of the lines.

Success came quickly to Gemma Kahng, 41, an immigrant from Korea. Sales of her $750 suits in traffic-stopping colors reached $5 million in five years--that's high in high fashion. Says she: "I wanted to grow slowly, but every season my business has doubled or tripled." An even bigger success is Vera Wang, 46, a native New Yorker who opened a retail bridal shop in 1990 and now dresses Hollywood's elite. Wang has hit the $10 million mark.

Most Asian American designers start on a shoestring and operate small, lean, and independently. Han Feng (pronounced Hahn Fung), 32, immigrated ten years ago from China and began selling pleated silk scarves to friends in 1989. To keep her expenses low, she uses her airy Manhattan apartment as a showroom for her collection, which includes smart suits and voluminous coats for career women.

For now, most have kept the business in the family. "Family support, both financial and moral, is very big in Asian culture," notes Josie Natori, 48, a former Wall Street investment banker and the dean of Asian American designers. The Filipino-born Natori sells more than $50 million with her boardroom-to-bedroom lingerie line; she has just launched a fragrance.

Is the Asian influence on fashion just a passing fad? It's hard to call anything permanent in the fashion world--but at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, more than 25% of the 12,236 students are Asian.

- Faye Rice