last time we talked about the troubles of fashion design in china. now, let’s look at the universal problems of fashion design in the world.
charles frederick worth is widely considered to be the first designer to have his label sewn onto his garments in the late 1800’s. that means the existence of fashion designers are only about 100 years old. it is not inconceivable that fashion designers could be rendered obsolete in our lifetime, much like a typesetter or a bus ticket collector. at the very least, the relevance is being lessened by the modern phenomenon of celebrity; lindsay lohan is in charge of emanuel ungaro (anyone really believe the spanish designer estrella archs call the creative shots should have their heads examined). sara jessica parker is heading up the new halston heritage line in more ways than one, being the chief creative officer, as well as the president, and was given an equity stake in the company. let’s not forget about kanye west.
what should a designer do? well, i would concentrate on fashion and design. forget about marketing, the future is all about products. an identity formed by great merchandizes will stand the test of time.
for a brief period of time in ’99, i was the stylist assistant of alex white of w magazine so that i can learn a few things about the press. (i wasn’t the only one figured that out: alexander wang interned at teen vogue and thakoon panichgul was a writer for harper’s bazaar in the late 90’s.) one time, there was a mixed up for an outfit in the closet and another editor threw a fit to the point that i was yelled at by bridget foley. all i could think of was that all the new york designers’ works looked all the same. once the labels came off, there was no way i can tell which jacket is from which “big-time” designer. sure enough, i started looking for any outfit without a label and voilà i found it. that’s when i realized the important of the identity of a design house. you know that is a helmet lang, a balenciaga, or a mcqueen when you see one.
i see many newcomers with whole collections and their fashion shows. first, it is a waste of their limited resources – most of them will run out of energy with the shows and have nothing left for sales, marketing and logistics, stuffs that actually support a business. second, times are different now. renaissance men belong to…. the renaissance. what is needed now is expertise. for watches? rolex. for leather accessories? hermes. for trench? burburry.
a good example is aitor throup. he is a known designer worked with c.p. company on the updated mille miglia jacket and with umbro on new soccer outfits. but for his own debut collection this season, it is only about the “legs” – 38 pairs of trousers were dressed on carefully crafted sculptures and suspended from the ceiling in a gallery space in paris. by concentrating on pants, he is saying more about the contemporary menswear than the lv men show by his expertise on structure and process.
let your works speak for yourself.
(first published in the mar. 2010 issue of his life magazine)
think about picking the new beijing olympic stadium back in 2003, if my design were just with bricks and cements, would i have gotten the project?
let’s say you are driving a bmw. a newer model comes out and it looks great. very modern. but then you find out that the horsepower didn’t change. no new safety features. the fuel efficiency didn’t even improve. basically, all that is change is the new styling of the exterior. would you buy it? what about getting a new designer chair? a new phone? a new computer? i think you got the point – a new styling is not really a new design. so here is my real question: why are you buying yesteryear’s technology when you are buying fashion?
fashion champions vintage like no other design fields. couture values how many thousand of man-hours are needed to make one dress, how the embroidery techniques are unchanged for over a century. how backward is that? if vintage is so great, then why are we buying new stuff? yea, i am talking to you, marc jacobs.
and this bring me to fashion design in china. playing catch up with the west is a losing battle. competing in the quality of traditional tailoring with the italian is a slow and painful process even if you win. and we are at a great disadvantage if we simply subject ourselves to the judges of good taste from france.
we need to look no further than the chinese auto industry for hints. wang chuan-fu, the ceo of ‘byd’, knows styling is only part of the equation. to outrun the gasoline-based car companies and truly compete internationally, he saw lithium ion batteries as the solution – new technology. for examples, how can we utilize the sneakers production technology and create something new and fashionable that we can call our own?
armed with the knowledge and the experience of western designers, we should all be new style trailblazers to push fashion forwards. and let technology be our tools.
(first published in the feb. 2010 issue of his life magazine)
the wrong: using the same idea on the wrong context
product design, music, fashion, architecture, and movies.
which one of the above does not belong in the same group?
(hints: music is about emotions. movies are about experiences. product design is about function. architecture is about belonging. fashion is about cash.)
the answer is…. fashion. all others are about ideas.
but, it could be worst, when fashion has the wrong ideas – look at the givenchy menswear spring ‘08. please tell me what man would wear pink lace shorts and men’s tights? and what is his statement anyways? another example is thom browne spring ’09. he has similar ideas to put men in skirts. there were pants with a crotch dropped so low as to make them look like dresses? how many guys can dress like marc jacobs to work and to play?
when yves saint laruent pioneered the androgynous idea in 1966, he was reflecting his time and empowering women by giving them the option of wearing clothes with influence and power – menswear. that was a great idea. putting women’s clothes on a men’s body? that is a bad idea.
a female body is gracefully sculptural with attractive curve for child bearing; a male body is simply and totally utilitarian for hurting. womenswear designer spent over 100 years to perfect it for women. using those research and development for men is as appropriate as knocking off the aviation technology for submarines – ridiculous. so what should a fashionable man do?
think uniforms.
(first published in the jan. 2010 issue of his life magazine)
for hussein chalayan spring / summer 2010, the most important look is # 42 – hussein himself came out pulling a dali. and it is also the most disappointing.
lacking the punches and the muscle from his early career, he is now reduced to a part of the fashion machine. whatever happened to the “let-the-works-speak-for-themselves”? puma being creatively directed by him has showed no teeth and no improvement. his own namesake line with the backing of ppr (or gucci if you will) is looking worst than when he was independent. what the hell on earth is going on with him?
we are still very much angry, but we are also super busy with our projects in china. we take on same fashion labels in the mainland and are really trying to work our magic there. as soon as we get time to breath, we will figure out a way to incorporate our experience there with the (angry) fashion blog.
we have been compiling a helpful designer list of who’s-in and who’s-out of all the major fashion houses with their ceos and their parent companies for the past 6 months. it is in .html format for your cut-and-paste convenience.
alternatively, you can open the ‘information’ tab on the right sidebar and click on designers’ musical chairs.
please email us for any misses, hints, and ‘rumors’ of the fashion game.
the right: never stop learning and employing new technology
jean paul gaultier might not be the hottest name around at the moment, but it will be your mistake to ignore him. take his marketing campaign for the first anniversary (1st birthday if you will) of his ‘madame’ fragrance, it is the most creative online promotion to date. over the next few weeks, he will slowly reveal the secret identity of a mystery guest though his website and a network of blogs, thus ensuring the word-of-mouth internet phenomenon (no, we are not part of that network. and yes, we realize we are being ‘used’).
we speculate that the secret guest is the artist brian donnelly, better known as kaws.
lesson learned: technology is a tool like a typewriter, but you still have to come up with a story.
on the left, we have the classic birkin bag by hermes.
on the right, we have the brand new peekapoo bag by fendi for spring 09.
the birkin is an iconic bag with a history. but, it’s not the most user friendly bag to carry around – you can barely put it though your shoulder, and that closure is not form-follow-function to say the least. (how many times have you seen the bag wide open with 1 strap on the shoulder with the other falling off?) well, one thing for sure – the waiting list is more than 2 years.
now, why would fendi referencing such a thing? they don’t need to be on the coattails of hermes long history, heritage, nor their projection of quality (leave that to the chinese, like me). and it’s not even a great functioning bag. is that any truth to the karl lagerfeld retiring rumor then?
on the left, we have a hermes bag dated before 2003.
on the right we have a comme des garçons louis vuitton crossover bag from 2008.
of course, we don’t dare to say our beloved rei kawakubo was copying (oh my god!). but for someone who is widely and blindedly admired for her originality, this simply shouldn’t have happened. it was a lazy design in her high standard. the collaboration was disappointing in not realizing its earth-shaking potential. it was a business-as-usual project, and that is just unusual for comme des garçons.
wrong: fashion show for show’s sake suggestion: learn from the concepts of car shows
after the second world war, an influential school of car builders emerged in italy. their activities were 2-headed: consulting work for mass production companies and, designing expensive custom-made concepts there were pieces of art that served as a platform for the evolving and testing of new concepts of forms. without that movement, there would be no concept cars and, in turns, no sexy car shows.
take bmw’s gina (geometry and functions in “n” adaptions), it’s a visionary roadster that showcases an elastic and transformable outer ’skin’ stretched across a moveable metal structure. that is something needed to be shown for all the hard work from the laboratory. on top of that, hundreds of thousands of the general public can simple show up at the show and check out all the concept cars, along side the production cars and the sexy chicks.
on the other hand, we have the fashion shows. the above are 3 of the ‘best looks’ (out of 96! whatever happened to editing?!) of fall 09 according to vogue.com. marc, ralph, and the 2 cute boys are no bmw. but we suppose a gina is too much to ask.
there are no testing of new ideas or forms. hundreds of thousands of real paying customers are excluded. fashion shows are just public relation events, parties, and elitists’ semi-annual gatherings of the past. you know something is as good as dead when a tv show is named after it.
we were up in china last week for a meeting with a potential client. while waiting for the car to pick us up, we started to explore this ‘downtown’ area near the train station out of boredom. being brave, we wandered into this center area that resemble a fancy shoppping mall with a garden. the real estate developer did a fine job, but no one is going to know – the place is empty. no foot traffic at all. mental note: there is no middle class in china yet, at least no in the same sense as in the states. (even if you’ve built it, they haven’t come.)
on the way back, we saw a nike store, an adidas store and a puma store. wondering if the hussein chalayan effect is in place, we decided to check out puma. first thing who greeted us was the red sign under the logo: ‘all goods are up to 70% off, 15% off on all new arrivals’. but other than that, the whole place was nice. too nice. gucci kind of nice. then we check out the prices – renminbi 599 (us$ 85) for a pair of sneakers. considering most workers in the area make under renminbi 2000, the shoes cost almost 1/3 of the salary of an average consumer. mental note: the international athletic brands in china are the luxury fashion brands in the west. (in turns, the luxury fashion brands in china are the ferraris and the patek philipp in the west.)
the right: fearlessly charge into the unknown territory
we are probably the last few to find out that lynn yaeger is out of a job. the village voice, where the legendary fashion critic worked for over 30 years, gave her the pink slip on dec 29, 08.
we don’t know her personally, but i met her once 6 years ago. it was for some lower east side thing, something about a shop project promoting new designers and the district. i didn’t care about it, but i did want to introduce myself to judges lynn yaeger and mickey boardman of papermag. with my crazy little accessories line at the time, we talked for about 5 minutes. she won’t remember it, but the encounter was helpful in my quest. (a month later, we turned down the offer because i didn’t think we would make the fee back in the project.)
now, we dearly wish her to go on to more successful venture. she is too good for that place anyways. the voice is about the progressive kids in the city. but those same kids are about technology and the web. when the recession hit and the advertising dollars found their way online, the voice is looking at the same fate as dinosaurs. the good news is, lynn is now free to write for vogue, katie’s love, blogs, a book or 2, a tv series, etc.
risking contact with the h1n1 swine flu, we went up to guangzhou to attend the oldest trade show in china last wednesday (5/6/09). it is where you can find all kinds of factories manufacturing all types of garments and accessories you could ever want under one roof. a big roof it is: there are 15 halls all together with each the size of each pier at the coterie new york show. one could get lost in it for days.
the main business was export, but change was in the air. some quotes were in renminbi instead of us dollars, moq (minimum order quantity) came as low as 200 instead of thousands of dozens, and western buyers were few and far between. not every factory really gets this, but the smart ones figured out domestic consumption is the future and some had even tried and failed at making their own brands. china is faster then all the researchers and analysts could calculate.
not wandering aimlessly and cluelessly, we had a plan. we didn’t waste time on tailoring, woven, or cut-&-sewn fashion factories (they are a dim a dozen. besides, it’s better to build relationships with those who we have connection with). their qualities are not comparable to the europeans’, for the simple reason that the chinese are late to the game by about half a century.
so what did we do? our identity being futuristic, athletic & romantic, we want very specific type of factories – those who make diving dry suits, ski wear, moto jackets, cyclist uniforms, etc. the chinese’ tech factories are every bit as good as the italians’, again for the simple reason that everybody started those tech manufacturing at the same time. without the european advantage of a head start, the mainland dominated such area at every price point. (that’s why all sneakers are made in china while european leather shoes still reign supreme.) surprisingly, they are quite excitingly open to our ideas. either the recession really helped us, or they do understand what we are trying to accomplish.
we are making fashion out of the tech; we are not trying to make tech fashionable.
we really don’t mean to pick on coach, but they provide such good materials.
even thought hermes was found in 1837 as a saddle shop by thiery hermès, the carriage and horse logo and well-known orange hermès boxes weren’t introduced until 1951, when the company was under the direction of robert dumas-hermès, after the death of emile-maurice hermès. now, we don’t think it’s necessary to point out who ‘inspired’ who regarding the logo, do we?
coach build their huge business in the past 10 years by changing their cooperate identity from a manufacturing standpoint (all products were produced in the states based on their 34th street factory in new york city) to a marketing-driven brand. they saw a niche in america they described as ‘affordable’ luxury. (an oxymoron if you ask us. it is the second worst ‘creative concept’ next to the credit default swap.) the outcome are those gucci/lv/hermès hybrid bags at 1/3 of the price. and they translated to comp sales of over 80% for an extended period of time and ended up being a few-billion-dollar-a-year business. it was a combination of creative business decision, good operation management, and great fortune.
the same can’t be said for their design department. at a time when people are buying 6 less coach bags to save up for 1 hermès, it is high time for them to stand on solid original ground by their own ideas product-wise. 2nd hand concepts won’t cut it no more. but knocking-off is just too deeply embedded in their dna. to speak for themselves with design may be too much to ask of a company who needed to borrow even for their logo.
the wrong: capitalizing on smaller labels’ designs
on the left is the pierre hardy signature bag from 2006.
in the middle and on the right are the cricket summer 09 group from coach.
do we have to say more?
after running low on ideas from gucci (and running up the tap on the lawyers’ fee), coach has decided to take on a new direction. start coming up with original concepts? no. they have decided to pick on the ‘little guys’. simply take their hard-earned look and identity, and promote it like it’s their own. the thinking is simple: middle america probably never heard of a pierre hardy, so let’s introduce his ideas and call it the cricket. oh, and it probably will make them 100 million bucks. can you imagine how mr. hardy feels when he sees this shit?
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