The HUB at Lafayette Cinema

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Literally on top of the Xintiandi subway exit sits the former Lafayette Cinema, which will be the new venue for The HUB, Asia’s leading premium fashion trade fair.

This truly fantastic venue is now called the Art & Design Centre, at 323 Middle Fuxing Road. This is definitely the most beautiful large-scale venue in the Xintiandi region. One of László Hudec’s masterpieces, the building first opened in 1933 and was renovated again in recent years and has played host to quite a few fashion events, including one by Louis Vuitton, and was also the site for the Kick the Gong Around market in 2014. The HUB will be happening there from April 9 to 11, the same time as Shanghai Fashion Week.

Hong Huang Critiques KOLs

In her Jing Daily column, the most famous KOL and media figure of all, Hong Huang seems to suggest that we temper our enthusiasm, pointing out that “KOLs can buy fans as well as create fake numbers of readership, just as easily as print can lie about circulation”.  She suggests that customers are getting more sophisticated and less materialistic. Brands need to really represent something deeper and more meaningful if they are to succeed. I would say the same about KOLs. Their anodyne spirit, obsession with taking photos of themselves, and fixation on the latest trends hopefully will make them a trend that passes quickly. People might appreciate them more if they represented something bigger than their latest outfit.

Upcycling and Eco-Design in China

As we try to seek out a direction in the field of upcycling fashion that makes sense for Pawnstar, I have poured through the China fashion blogs, eco-fashion related websites, pinterest etc. to get an idea for what is already happening in this field. I thought I would share some of what I found related to designers and others in China that are using leftover factory fabrics waste, bamboo, discarded clothing, as well as recycled and sustainably sourced materials to create new fashions.

Click below to see some of the sites that I’ve found.

Some Musings on Pawnstar

I’m going to attempt an explanation of why Stylites seems to be all about Pawnstar these days. At fashion parties in Beijing or on terraces of art deco apartments in Shanghai, people often ask what became of Stylites. This site is still known as the first street style blog, mostly about hipsters in the Beijing hutongs. But I haven’t photographed the style tribes of China for a while, though friends and fashionistas say I should have continue. Maybe I got tired of it. Maybe the subject of China and style is too overhyped with the myriad local fashion designers, KOLs, and platforms that promote them. The freestanding blog also seems less viable in the age of mobile everything and social media: wechat and instagram trumped blogs like stylites. I didn’t come up with a way to truly capitalize on Stylites when it was most publicized around 2009. Now there’s no way to compete with the influence of the mega-KOLs such as Gogoboi, Leaf Greener, Peter Xu, etc., etc.

Stylites now contains a record of all the projects on which I’m working. And that’s exactly it. Here you can find information on the pop-ups that I’ve been doing at the Four Seasons Hotel Beijing – click on Stylites Projects to the right and this intro to the pop-up program from the Four Seasons site as well as their pinterest board – as well as what I’ve done for other clients like American Rag Cie and The HUB. The project that perhaps most excites me at the moment is something else though, something that I have found challenging to explain here.

From Stylites to Pawnstar

Pawnstar is a project that I have been working on in China with my wife. For me, Pawnstar is about doing a business that relates to fashion but at the same addresses the frustration I get from being involved with fashion. What bothers me is the waste produced by the fashion industry and its numbing seasonal fashion cycle. Being surrounded by people who seem to revel in this addiction to change and newness feels very much at odds with my values. I needed to do something with a more eco or puritanical dimension to it. This has led me to move toward a business focused on secondhand, consignment and resale. This business is now called Pawnstar but it remains in the research and trial period.