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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.

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Zamani Collection x rechenberg

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This installation at the Four Seasons Hotel Beijing is particularly special for me because my father my father, Richard Frye, was a professor of Iranian history and I grew up surrounded by rugs at home.  When my mother, Eden Naby, and her family immigrated to the United States they sold their land in Iran and used the money to buy rugs, which they shipped their new home.  Some of these they sold, using the proceeds to purchase their first house in the Philadelphia.  Others of these rugs are still with my family today.

This heritage made me especially happy to work with Zamani Collection to put together the pop-up that will be at the hotel for the rest of this month and early February.

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Going Dutch

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The split will go three ways between furniture, decor, and footwear.  Coming up on March three is a new pop up at the Four Seasons Hotel Beijing.   Dutch shoe brand O’Quirey has teamed up with Ubi Gallery and Studio Henny van Nistelrooy to present a sampling of Dutch design today.  The opening event will be high profile with quite an impressive list of magazines attending – everything from Robb Report to Esquire – as well as TV stations CCTV and Phoenix.  Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, H.E. Mr. Aart Jacobi will also make an appearance.

The image that will probably stick in everybody’s mind is that of the series of specially commissioned paintings that put bold O’Quirey shoes into familiar works of Van Gogh.

Here is more in Chinese on their wechat platform and you can click more to see the press release.

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Juma Studio @ FSBJ

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‘Journey’ by Juma Studio opens at the Four Seasons Hotel Beijing next week.

For the last few months we have been working on a program of pop-up shops at the hotel that I believe has the potential to remake the retail landscape here in China.

With space at shopping centers in China’s top cities difficult to come by for multi-brand stores and smaller designers and traffic far too low on streets, luxury hotels are an interesting alternative for independent players. A regular flow of high-end customers, premium locations, a tendency on the Mainland toward very large lobbies and the need of these hotels for fresh content all combine to offer a very attractive environment for independent players in fashion. These types of shopping experiences have been seen at hotels in the West but they are more important in China, given the size and speed of development of the market. Niche retailers like Wuhao or a small, start-up, brand like Juma can get their foothold in this market via this kind of event.

Here’s an interesting article from the Jing Daily on the subject.

Click below to see some of the rudimentary mood boards that I created.

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The Beijing Vintage Ride

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This is four months old, but I still want to put up these photos. I have a few extremely good excuses for the delay and the relative lack of activity on Stylites. Those who know me, know what I mean.

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Anyway, in the next few posts will be some of my photos from the second Beijing Vintage Ride, which occurred back in late March. I have been thinking about bicycling a lot recently, because it is one of my ambitions to make hotels in Beijing more bike friendly by convincing them to put racks in prominent locations out front. I am hoping to start with the Four Seasons Hotel Beijing.

Here’s more from the China Daily.

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Beijing’s Most Stylish Restaurant Opening

The grand opening of Mesa on March First will be Beijing’s first dazzling party in the Year of the Snake (sorry Dior!). In addition to free flow wine, cocktails, beer, tapas and desserts, the event features a live jazz performance by Phillipe Mege and a charity auction with proceeds going to Free Lunch for Children. Bidding is on items donated by the Four Seasons Beijing, D-Sata, the Chair Man, and others local designers, wine distributors, and retail outlets.