Le Divan: For Beijing’s Happy Few

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Here are Aurelien and Tony, the badboys of Le Divan studio in red and black. Their pieces, crafted right at their studio in Caochangdi, comes both prêt à porter and made-to-measure. The prêt à porter is in extremely limited quantities and would only fit a very blessed portion of the population. Contact them directly to schedule a viewing as their brand is not available at any shop.

Tony had been wearing a thick winter hat immediately before the shot. Also, considering Aurelien’s hair, I’m worried that there may not be a hairdresser out in Caochangdi. That would be a good excuse for any hair condition, since Caochangdi is about ten-thousand li from the center of the city. I didn’t hear the explanation for Tony’s shoes.

Aurelien has appeared on Stylites several times, wearing black and white and silk tweed. Tony has been here, too. Both also were on the Sartorialist.

Their work will be on display at next Thursday’s Uniform X party at Punk.

China Fashion Week, Beijing H&M, and Shanghai Barbies

The timing of China Fashion Week was a subject of some debate among my contacts. According to China Apparel Net, it will start,here in Beijing, on March 24. China fashion week has been going for eleven years.

H&M will open one shop this Spring (at Joy City in Xidan) and one this fall. Outside of Beijing, H&M will open three shops in China in 2009 for a total of five new shops this year. Unlike Zara, H&M is staying out of India for the time being.

Mattel opened its House of Barbie Mattel in Shanghai and is looking to the China market to help it recover from a 21% plunge in sales as a result of the slowdown.

From Hefei to Shibuya

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From Anhui, Rinko is a writer of pop music who is based here in Beijing. She is a lover of all things Japanese, from style to the language. She spent a half-year in Tokyo studying composition. Rinko is also the girlfriend of Ali Nosrati, founder and owner of the dowdy fourhundred. Next Thursday at Punk Bar in the basement of Opposite House, the dowdy fourhundred leather bags will be on display during a pretentious and decadent party that I am helping host.

Beijing, Impossibly Small

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The China Post tells us the total population of the municipality of Beijing, including legal and illegal migrant workers, is 17 million, a figure cited by most others. The Embassy of the PRC in the USA frightens us a bit more with 20 million. Many of my acquaintances, aiming to drive the annoying foreigner from these teeming shores, claim 25 or even 30 million. When talking to friends back home, I round up to a neat 100 million. Any fewer would be a let down. This is China.

And yet, I have almost never in recent memory walked down Nanluoguxiang without encountering at least three people I know. In evenings, when I don’t really photograph, the number is even higher. At times, it approaches 100 million. In Sanlitun, it is also common for me to run into people I know, though there I often pretend I am someone different. Granted, in the other million hectares of this miasma of concrete devouring the North China plain at light speed, it would be almost shocking to see a familiar face.

I literally always run into photographer Xiao Yang. Though I do like him, our meetings have not been intentional after the first one. Xiao Yang was on his way back from photographing the famous British-born art collector and critic, Karen Smith, who resides and houses her myriad works of avant-garde modern Chinese art in a courtyard near Jingshan.

Women Can be Heroes Too!

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This young tourist is a college student from Zhengzhou, Henan. Ku Ke (库珂)is studying to be a broadcasting host at Huanghe Science and Technology College, a private institution. She was on vacation for a week in Beijing with one of her friends. Most of her time was spent around Nanluoguxiang and Houhai.

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When Plastered tee-shirts first opened shop on Nanluoguxiang, I thought it would appeal mainly to foreign tourists looking for a hip gift. In fact, I directed several of my guests to the shop. The appeal that the brand, started by a Brit about two years ago, has had for Chinese tourists and locals is quite impressive. I have seen the shirts incorporated into very fashionable ensembles at at parties all over town.

So was it Mao that said “women can be heroes too” (女人也能当英雄)?

Stylites One of World’s 5 Best Street Blogs

Just as I received the hard copy of Der Spiegel in the mailbox of my courtyard, I also got word that H&M Magazine’s issue that features Stylites on page 18 was available in H&M shops around the world. H&M Magazine included Stylites in its list of the “World’s 5 Best Street Blogs” along with the Sartorialist and the Facehunter, the two most well-known blogs of this type. In thanks, I should mention that H&M will be making Beijing perfect, to paraphrase one of their slogans, within a month by opening its first shop at Joy City in Xidan.

H&M says its magazine has a global circulation of three-million. The top three US dailies are USA Today (2.3 million), The Wall Street (2.1 million), The New York Times (1.1 million), according to Wikipedia. Der Spiegel is a magazine with a circulation of 1.1 million.

The article includes a picture I took last summer of Edie Bao, who also appeared last week.

Also, I just saw that another blog Double King: Online Magazine for Fashion and Marketing did a post on Stylites.

Beijing’s Young, Hip, Couples

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These couples may not be at the cutting edge of style, but it’s always fun to find couples in which the two parts seem to go exceptionally well together. This is rarer than one might expect. The usual situation is a female concerned with fashion in an utterly girly way and usually carrying a designer handbag, accompanied by a horribly dowdy male with pleather shoes and an ill-fitting overcoat. These two study art design at Beijing Huijia University. The skull trend, investigated before, seems loath to die.
It’s a bit late, but I might even jump on the trend. Velvet slippers with the skull and crossbones have been one of the hottest items for at least two winters, as this article from the Spectator explains.

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And these two are recent graduates of university. They now operate an online fashion boutique. They are both born and raised in Beijing itself. This is surprisingly rare. Most people I encounter were born in the provinces and came here to work. She is indeed wearing a Yoo-hoo hoodie. This is in fact what convinced me to take the pic.

Some of my other favorite couples that have appeared on Stylites are the high school pair in which the guy was wearing M&M trousers, the two roommates wearing zebra pants and this pair of lovebirds. The last picture gives a great look at a wall along Nanluoguxiang from about eight months before the Olympics. Things are a lot cleaner now, though I adore the interesting patterns that the elements create on walls over the years.

Oil, Econ and Rock ‘n’ Roll

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Mylène Chen is an economist at Shell China Exploration and Production Co. Ltd. On the side, she sings for a rock band. Only 22, she speaks English and French, perhaps taking her name from France’s answer to Madonna. It’s funny because, in one of their constant comparisons of China with “developed” countries, several Beijingers have remarked to me that youngsters here have far fewer hobbies than their counterparts in the West. They do face far more constraints in the forms of huge loads of schoolwork and pressure from family, but I think that many people I meet in Beijing do a pretty good job in surmounting these.

Red Pants Alert!!

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There’s more to be scared of here than just the red trousers. I know there is an indie band here called Hedgehog, but this young rocker must be part of Porcupine.

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I hope that bag is real. Clearly her boyfriend is investing all of his fashion renminbi in her. Aside from the tedious sack, I do rather like her look and it’s a nice shade of red.

Slim red jeans can be a good alternative to the usual blue. Anyway, this was a small fraction of the people wearing red pants on Nanluoguxiang this past weekend. It is a good color to wear. It symbolizes good luck and happiness and is thought to ward off evil.

Stylish High Schooler

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This is perhaps both the youngest and most stylish person in Beijing. I photograph many people whose styles I find very interesting. The way they look, the way they dress, and what they tell me can form an alluring little story. However, I rarely find styles that are truly inspirational as well as original. This is one of those cases. A tenth grader at the German Embassy School (Deutsche Botschaftsschule Peking), Vera, originally from Austria, has lived in Beijing for nearly ten years, since she was quite little.

Dapper Germans Understand Browns

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To celebrate the recent spike in German viewers resulting from the recent Spiegel article, here are two stylish German businessmen I encountered in Sanlitun. Claus Vogel is Senior Consultant at MSM Mandarin Strategy Management Consulting GmbH, a China-focused firm based in Düsseldorf. He shows us how well brown and navy go together. The navy Hugo Boss three-piece is nice with not only the shoes but also the brown tie, far preferable to the usual bright stripyness.

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His friend, mixing a utilitarin vest and high-quality casual wear, looks practical but stylish in earthtones. The suede monkstrap wholecuts are from Trickers and made in England.