Nels Frye is a freelance writer, photographer, consultant and stylist, based in Beijing. Focuses are on street style, other consumer trends, and broader social issues.
Yuan Yuan (元元）the fashion editor for Yoka.com, has been at every single China Fashion Week event with a photographer. The 80 looks from the Qi Gang (ç¥åˆšï¼‰show are all there. Some highlights are these arm baubles (what’s the proper term?), this rather nationalistic cape, this women with a walking stick, this member of the Congolese royal family from 2225, and this dress, of which I thought each member of the audience deserved a piece.
My overall reaction is that I just didn’t realize Sioux warriors were marrying into the Coruscant aristocracy.
Qi Gang (ç¥åˆš) created a remarkable show for Secfashion. There was a bit of the jungle (with an actual stuffed wild cat in a model’s arm), a bit of Midsummer Night’s Dream meets The East is Red, and a large dose of high-octane glamour. I should think Qi Gang will be one of the main lights on the fashion scene for years to come.
Some shows have been memorable, some bland, and others had nice pieces. As one might expect, there is quite a difference in the types of people who attend each show, based largely on the clout of the brand and the designer. Some are filled with design students and some boast the gliteratti of the fashion press. Here is the China Daily introduction to the week.
I skipped the NE Tiger (东北虎）show on Monday because I had to write an article and their shop displays have always irritated me. The designs seem like an injustice to the majestic beast. Still, the pics make look interesting in a way.
Qi Gang (above) is one of the names I hear most this week (his two shows are Mihuang (米皇) Cashmere Collection and Secfashion). Apparently, the vast majority of the items in the Mihuang show were 100% cashmere or blends.
The second show I saw was Entra, which seemed more wearable and less conceptual.
Next was the Tsai Meiyue wedding dress show. It opened with a very cute little girl (scroll down) coming down the runway with one of the models. The show was pleasant. Focusing on wedding dresses is a clear recipe for success here.
The Throb Immobile show was traumatizing, as the name of the brand could imply. The clothes, models, and music all seemed to suggest the lifestyles of the elite in some dystopian future in which natural fibers have gone the way of the polar ice cap. The show ended with a yet another, still more mangled, electro Carmina Burana, which will prevent me from ever again enjoying Orff’s masterpiece.
The styles at the DGVI show ranged from sexy, to tawdry, to gaudily slutty, meaning it was quite entertaining and fun. There was an actual DG and some of the music played was very charming. The style was Miss Sixty with a strong dose of Wenzhou, which is probably where most of the dreadfully cheap chic of that Italian brand is produced anyway. The problem with fashion shows like this, especially in China, is that I’m never sure about whether the effect of the clothes and styling is what was intended by the creative team. Well, actually, in this case I think it was. Mr. Li Zhilong, the heavily-accented Creative Director, wearing a shiny (clearly synthetic) velvet suit and shades, looked right in his element surrounded by the models, all in jeans that had at least ten zippers. This was the only show I’ve seen that had a large number of foreigners in the audience. I think the entire German and Austrian embassies were there. Afterwords, this show also had a nice cocktail party, as foreigners tend to expect.
The high point of Tuesday was the Cocoon show. This view is clearly shared by the fashion media as this was the only event on Tuesday at which the elites of that group were in evidence. Both the China Vogue and Bazaar editors-in-chief attended as did some minor Hong Kong celebrities. This show had quite a bit that stylish women would really covet. It was also the first one that revealed some understanding of color. The use of polka dots was especially appealing. The night shows are the must-see ones.
I ran into this stylist after the Entra show, on the second day of China Fashion Week. Behind him are the buses that took press from the Beijing Hotel venue to D-Park, out at 798. All media members were provided with a free, authentic, Big Mac dinner on the way back from 798 to the middle of town. I’d never had a Big Mac before and I never thought my first one would come after watching hundreds of emaciated models.
It’s going to be raining men. Come chillier times, I have a preference for men’s attire, and over the last few days, my lens has been more drawn to those of the male persuasion. Gents benefit from fashions that don’t reveal skin, just as the deadly sex looks appealing while displaying legs, cleavage, shoulders and all those other delectables.
Held at the Beijing Hotel and D-Park at 798, the second 2009 China Fashion Week celebrates the designs of brands based all around China, but with something of a focus in Guangdong and Zhejiang. I will have quite a more on this later, but for now here is Terry, a stylist at Tony Studio, after the “Mihuang” Qi Gang Cashmere High Class Fashion Show.
From a small town in Yunnan, Peipei runs Bye Bye Disco, one of the most notable shops on Nanluoguxiang, with boyfriend Pang Kuan, a member of disco-punk hybrid act New Pants. More on Bye Bye Disco on the website of That’s Beijing, a magazine that is now defunct. This place is beloved of foreigners, who come for the iconic Feiyue sneakers (available all the way up to size 47 at Bye Bye Disco). Feiyue is so hip these days that there is even a blog.
Christmas is coming. I thought I would do a weekly roundup of the most interesting or questionable gifts.
The ‘Business Class’ USB necktie from Dialog05 is frightening. It takes the analogy of ties to nooses to a new level. I prefer my ties to be decorative rather more practical. Still more classy is the After Office Tie from Sinapsis of Argentina. I guess stylish office boys won’t have to use their teeth to get at the lager any more.
I’m wondering if the Mulberry-Apple laptop bags will be available at the store in Sanlitun. This idea is going to be very successful globally.
I would like (or like to have something made in the style of) some of the new items from Band of Outsiders, a brand that clearly understand the zeitgeist.
I’ve always seen trailers as an extremely tasteful and stylish means of getting from A to B (they’re even chic as permanent residences). Though a step below sedan chairs and rickshaws, they are a valiant attempt at living a life of excess and they are available to the average American. The Opera trailer brings an iconic structure to your driveway and the highways. From Belgian architect Axel Enthoven,this would be nice for your next cross-Henan road trip.
Su Hang is a graphic designer who runs his a business with his wife, Mimi, in Beijing’s CBD. I met him at the opening dinner for a very chic new restaurant called Hanshe (汉èˆ) for which he did much of the design of promotional and other materials. Buying much of his wardrobe in Hong Kong, Su Hang normally dresses in a eye-catching manner.
Velvet jackets are fairly common, but one doesn’t encounter bow ties so frequently. It strikes me that that I should attempt to replicate this outfit for some of the upcoming holiday parties (that I am already hearing about).
What a rebellious outfit! I was pleased to encounter charming but irreverent Shanghaier Ding Ying (ä¸é¢–）the other day, after not seeing her for almost two years. She was the first editor from a major publication to profile me, not so long after Stylites started. Over a year after my profile appeared in the City Life section of Modern Weekly, Ding Ying suggested to her colleague Chen Pu that I might write a weekly column for them. I am especially proud of this, the only column that I write in Chinese.
After seven years at Modern Weekly, she is moving on next month to be features editor at a big fashion magazine. Maybe she will be the next Chinese female editor compared to Anna Wintour.
Funny that when googling, the first pic of her is with someone else who has been on Stylites.
I ran into my friend, photographer Anne Li – who has appeared here before – at the NOTCH (Nordic and Chinese arts) festival that just opened. Being a gentleman and a sophisticate, I immediately poured her some coca-cola in a champagne flute.
The press gift at NOTCH was the second best I have ever received: the collectible October 2009 Wallpaper* with its provocative Karl Lagerfeld cover. The best gift from an event I ever received was the full-sized bottles of Vidal Sassoon shampoo and conditioner received at the opening of Izzue in Sanlitun. I like swag I can use, as opposed to the multitude of passport picture holders and glasses frame liners one gets from the luxury brands.
Reading their comments in this Wallpaper*, Lagerfeld seems pretty arrogant and, despite all his brilliance and eccentricity, hollow in comparison to Philippe Starck.
