Here is the link to that Fashionista piece that I mentioned earlier.

Beautiful Stranger is a seriously commercialistic street style site.  They found me at Bryant Park.  Luckily for them, I was rather more label-adorned than usual.

我在纽约的时候被这个网站拍过。

The current issue of Beijing’s City Weekend has a two page spread on me in their “Fashionista” section.  Unfortunately, I am sporting paisley and polka dots of the same scale (on tie and pocket square) in the same outfit, which is something of an offense.  Also my overeager smile makes it seem like the can in my hand contains diet coke or red bull rather than sparkling rosé.  Anyway, have a look for yourself.

NYC Fashion Week ended before I knew it had started and now I am on my way back to Beijing.  The time in the US was far too quick.

The Guangzhou Daily conducted an interview with me and here is the result.  They are still using that dreadful picture that Sanlian took where I am with my cat.  However, the piece is quite nice.

<<广州日报>>不久之前采访了我，这是文章的链接。没有想到他们用了以前<<三联生活周刊>>采访我时拍的照片。虽然我女朋友的猫咪比我更上镜，但是这篇报道还是挺不错的。

Here I am on the newsletter yoka.com sends to subscribers.

I will be heading there on Thursday.  Taking street style photos will not be a priority since Beijing is the overwhelming focus of my site.  Droves of bloggers of my type will be there anyway.  I will, however, work to report on the role of Beijingers at this event.

我周四就去。街拍不是我的目的因为我网站的主题是北京。还有，我估计会有很多做节拍网站的人都在。我可能会更想拍一些北京人在纽约时装周。

Here is a piece on me at Yoka.com, China’s leading fashion website.  The picture is a bit regrettable.

Here I am, unedited, and sounding like an intellectual who doesn’t know very much. I was caught on my way out of a show and did not have any time to prepare.  There wasn’t really even that much cat.

Also, at stylelist.com, here are pictures of the 20 strangest looks from China fashion week, without any mention of the designers.  I know the names of some of them though there are sadly quite a few that I did not catch.

Last night, a senior fashion editor based here commented that Stylites rejects all but the the young and the slim.   I always try to find stylish older people, but it is tough.  When they exist, they are usually in restaurants or in cars on the way to dining, but more comments on this later.

The idea that I reject weightier people had not crossed my mind.   It might be true although I might  plead that Beijing lacks a sizable overweight demographic.  Also, note that I display no addiction to conventional Chinese beauties – others have complained that there are not enough beauties on my blog.  Of course, I might just be photographing those I rate as beauties.

Regular updates will begin again.

The US has been fun.

I wrote a little piece assessing the changes in fashion over the last 60 years for the current China Daily, which includes a big supplement celebrating National Day.

That picture is execrable.  I must have overindulged the previous night and not found the light switch in the morning.

I must apologize for the less frequent updates lately.  Over the last three weeks, I have only been in Beijing for about three or four days and today am heading back to the States for about ten days.  With all of this travel, I have not had much time to scout the streets of Beijing.

Above is a girl that was in the Temple of Literature in Hanoi.  With its derelict but grand structures, Hanoi must be Asia’s most charming city and might be more like Paris than any other city outside Europe.  Breakneck economic growth has not yet drained the personality, and it remains free of the high-rise forests that fill Asia’s hundred identical metropolises.  Perhaps, it isn’t the most fashionable place in the region, but there are a lot of local crafts including silks, cottons and local designers.

NileGuide travel blog just did a post on the top five fashion blogs and included Stylites.

Cities:

1. Beijing

2. Hong Kong

3. Shanghai

4. New York

5. London

Countries:

1. China

2. USA

3. Germany

4. Canada

5. UK

DISGRASIAN™  wrote this about Stylites and it also was featured on the Huffington Post.  It captures quite well the value of Stylites, which is far more about people and a period in history than about fashion.

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.

What is chic in Tokyo or Helsinki? Style conscious people discuss on the internet what is worn on the streets of this world, and they thereby change elite models worldwide.

The man whom Nels Frye spotlighted did not look especially good, but he was worth a second glance. Frye met him on Changan Avenue in Beijing, a type with an unusually long beard [NF Note: I described him as "Jesus-like"], Adidas-like shoes and checkered coat and a cane. In no way a model, but that man had style, an unusual sort of boho, so typical of China in a state of explosion, the birth of a new creative class, said Frye. [NF Note: Collecting bottles definitely demands resourcefulness but I’m not sure about creativity. He addressed the man, asked permission to take a photo and put it on his blog. A little later came the first comments. On Frye’s website a small debate erupted. This photo inspired Nels so much that from then on he travelled all over Beijing with his camera. He photographed girls, ones who have cut their hair like Manga figures, young men with beards, pea jackets, pants with piped jeans and zebra stripes, and he put their photos on the internet.

For him street-style blogging was a hobby

So the American businessman, Nels Frye, 27, on the side, became a street style blogger. Every young person who allowed him to document the style of their city entered his blog which then was sent to the entire world. And in consequence he turned the established world model on its head.

What is important is not trends but style. Street-style bloggers show what real persons in their daily lives wear on the street and convey this to an audience of millions. Instead of showing over stylized mode-lines with skinny models, they show in their internet diaries how real people interpret a couture-circus. Not trendy but determinedly style. Everyone can comment on every picture. English is the universal language. There is no competition: it is a democratic forum for young people who express themselves and make the internet a common medium of style.

For Frye it led to this suddenly people from Chicago, Berlin or Helsinki comment on his blog with suggestions that a coat should be lengthened a bit, or that a particular outfit is well thought out. Other blogs, who do the same as Frye in Beijing, link to his site “Stylites” and from day to day the number of hits increases. Publishers of style magazibnes ask if they may use his pictures, and designers invite him to their exhibitions.

Worldwide, there are hundreds of these street-style blogs, etc……….

This piece from Der Spiegel (in German) contains quite a few mentions of Stylites and comments of mine on street style in Beijing.  Germany is now the third largest source of Stylites hits, behind China (#1) and the US (#2).  The city ranking is now: 1. Beijing, 2. New York, 3. Shanghai, 4. Berlin, 5. London.

The print version is in Der Spiegel from the last week in February.

Shengzhou, Zhejiang, produces well over 200 million ties annually – almost all of China’s total production and at least three-quarters of the global total.  Almost every major Western retailer, from H&M and Next to Ted Baker and Sean John, Walmart to Primark, sources almost the entirety of their ties from this city.  Read more in my article from the February issue of China International Business.  Here are some more photos that I was lucky to get during my visits to the factories.

Babei, the largest tie producer in Shengzhou and most likely the world, is also the only factory with an exterior that vaguely suggests the colors of ties.   Over 70% of the 20 million ties Babei makes every year are exported.

Raw silk comes from Sichuan, Jiangsu and other provinces.  It comes in a few basic colors.  Dyeing – the only part of tie production that has a serious negative impact on the environment – usually occurs on the outskirts of Shengzhou.

The largest factories in Shengzhou have spinning machines that rotate at high speed 24 hours a day.

The computer-controlled looms create the fabric that are used to make ties.  Just over a decade ago, there were only about ten of these machines in Shengzhou and now there are over a thousand.  Babei’s factory has over a hundred – more than entire city of Como, Italy’s tie center.  James Kynge, tells the story of Como’s fall and Shengzhou’s rise in his book, China Shakes the World.

Working conditions seemed quite good in the tie factories I saw.  On this Babei’s factory floor, I saw ties from the following brands: Donald Trump, Sean John, Chaps, Austin Reed, Counta Mara, Tasso Elba, C&A, Zara, H&M, Marks and Spencer and Target. There were many other brands that I had not seen before.

This a large order for a children’s hospital in the United States.  Most ties made in Shengzhou use polyester interlinings of the type seen here.  Wool is much more expensive, but is better for the best ties.

Here is a just completed order for China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile phone operator ranked by number of subscribers, with 415 million customers.  With 111,998 staff in China, one can see why this is a good client.

The producers of Shengzhou only want to do volume.  There is little profit to be had from small orders that demand high quality.  Thus, my mission to Shengzhou was not highly successful.  The goal had been to find a factory willing to produce ties for Senli and Frye.  Strangly enough we have chosen to sell ties that are made in the United States, the Hickey Style line.