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)

了不起的“标签”

上次我说到了中国服装设计界存在的困难，这次让我们看一看全球服装界共同拥有的问题。

1800年末，charles frederick worth被认为是第一位把品牌商标缝制在自己服装上的设计师。换句话说，服装设计品牌的存在只有100多年。大胆的说，在我们的有生之年，服装设计师这个概念的存在会过时甚至被代替也不奇怪，就好比一位排字工人或公交车收票员慢慢地在被淘汰。明星的存在逐渐的在减弱设计师的重要性就证明了这一点。lindsay lohan在负责服装品牌emanuel ungaro的设计（西班牙设计师estrella archs早已不再发号施令）。sara jessica parker在率领halston heritage系列的每一个环节，她不但是主设计师也担任了总经理的位置，同时拥有该公司的股权。我们也别忘了kanye west。

那么一位设计师该做些什么呢？我会把注意力放在时装和设计上。不要去忧虑推销，未来是属于产品的。优良的产品才意味着品牌的成功和永久性。

在1999年的短暂的一段时间里，我曾经为《w》杂志的alex white当过时装助理，为了近一步了解媒体的运转（我不是唯一有这念头的人：alexander wang曾经在《teen vogue》作过实习生，thakoon panichgul也曾在90年代末给《harper’s bazaar》写过稿子）。还记得有一次在拍摄现场上出现了服装上的混乱，bridget foley冲着我骂了起来。当时我脑子里只能想的是纽约设计师的作品看上去全一模一样。一但把品牌的商标撤下来，我无法识别哪一件夹克是哪一位大师的作品。我翻来覆去地去找没有商标的衣服，果然找到了那件夹克。这让我领悟到，一个设计团体拥有着独自代表性的风格是件多么重要的事情。一眼看到你就知道那是helmet lang、balenciaga或mcqueen。

我经常看到新人花费大量的时间在时装秀上展现他们的新系列。首先，这就是在浪费自己的时间和资源——大部分的人都会耗尽精神，无法去完成销售、市场和物流，这些支撑产业运转的环节。其次，时代在变，文艺复兴的人属于文艺复兴的时代，而当今需要的是专业知识。要表？有rolex。皮革配件？hermès。风衣？burburry。

设计师aitor throup就是一个很好的例子。他曾经设计过c.p. company的mille miglia夹克和umbro的足球服装系列。至于他自己首次亮相的服装系列，称为“褪”系列——38条裤子被穿在精心打造过的雕塑上面，并由绳索悬空垂钓着在巴黎的一个艺术廊里。把注意力完全聚集在裤子上，比起lv的男装秀，他更能从结构和工艺的专业角度上体现出当代男装的核心。

(第一次发表: 2010年3月 他的生活杂志. 翻译: joe wang.)

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)

陈词滥调让荷包坚挺

假设你开辆bmw。一部全新的款式，外形好看，现代感强。但你发现车的马力没变，没有新的安全功能，燃油效率也并没有提高。简单的说，唯一的变化是它外表的新造型。你会买吗？同样的道理你会买把新的设计品牌的椅子吗？新手机？新电脑？我想你明白我的意思——新的造型不代表新的设计。那我想问：在购买时装时你为何选择昔日的设计？

时装界的大腕儿们比起任何其它设计领域都要老式。高级定制时装不在乎花费多少人工来完成一件礼服，还有几百年来始终不变的刺绣技术。这不是在倒退是什么？如果老式这么好我们又为何在买新的东西？没错，我正在说marc jacobs，他向来是时尚界中一位笨拙而孤僻的局外人。同时，他又是最酷、最具影响力的时装设计师。著名时尚评论人suzy menkes曾经 在《国际先驱论坛报》上写道：“lv的08s/s整场表演是对经典时尚的一次拙劣模仿。”

说到这里，中国的时装设计也面临同样困境。追赶西方的设计只意味着一场败局。与意大利在传统剪裁的质量上竞争，既是你获得胜利那也是一个缓慢又痛苦的过程。同样，如果我们只服从良好品味的法国，无论怎样我们都处于不利地位。

中国的汽车产业就是最好的例子。byd的ceo王传福明确地了解造型只是答案的一部分。想要超越燃烧汽油的汽车产业并在未来的市场站住脚，他预料锂离子电池才是汽车能源的未来——也就是说新科技。举个例子，我们怎样能采取球鞋上的生产技术来创造出属于我们的全新的时尚产品？

容纳了西方设计师的知识和经验，本土设计师应该打破所有限制，用科技推动时尚到极限，否则消费者的荷包只能一直坚挺了。

(第一次发表: 2010年2月 他的生活杂志. 翻译: joe wang.)

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.)

all respected designers not only reflect his/her times, but they also push through a new aesthetics creatively and commercially. think nicolas ghesquiere, rei kawakubo, halston, yves saint laurent, balenciaga, coco chanel,….