i was shopping a month ago at givenchy and found a pair of pants i like. after i realized it’s over us $500, i decided to sample some printed pants that i can’t find anywhere else. then, i was thinking maybe i would make some allover prints tees as well. why not printed shirts? eventually, with some print jackets, i am doing a whole line of bold menswear with a (daily)dozen pieces. and it costed less than the pants.
this is the way i always wanted to dress, if i could find it. so here i am, making my statements with crazy shit. maybe it’s out of control. maybe i’m out of my mind. but that’s me. if you want good solids, go to ‘gucci’, go to ‘uniqlo’. ‘deacon’ is unique.
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。
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)
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.)
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.
julian macdonald, who is not very high on my designers list, is a great example of how important first impression is. at just 24, he launched himself with some strong airy open knit sweater dresses. karl lagerfeld helped his case by using him for both chanel and his namesake collections. and he has been living on his first impression with his partying skill to this day. (according to caroline, my knitting instructor and julian’s classmate at the royal college of art, julian’s social ability far outweigh his actual design talent. in addition, she showed me that his airy knits were actually quite easy and lazy to do as well.)
a decade later, here comes mark fast. he is british. he does some great knits. and he is leaving a great first impression as well. would he actually go some where? a good indictor would be how long he actually keep a consulting jobs, which are surely on his way. if he couldn’t hold it and commit to it for more than 4 seasons, his talent would be call into question. first, one need a great first impression. then, you need a great second impresion. and so on. you get the deal. if not, julian macdonald again is a great example for it.
we call it ‘de nouveau’, a redux of art nouveau a century later.
more than a 100 years ago, art nouveau was started as a resistance to the messy compositions and the revival tendencies of the victorian era. it was underlined by a particular way of thinking about modern society and new production methods, attempting to redefine the meaning and nature of the work of art.
today, we are ‘again’ attempting the same feat, hence ‘de nouveau’. it’s romantics yet futuristic, which fits in perfectly with our aesthetics.
some use boxing gloves for their jobs, others use machine guns.
our tools are simpler but just as important.
pencils are never used because there is no discipline to graphite. it makes people drawing 2 lines but only thinking once. with a pen, the opposite happens – thinking twice before drawing a single line. pentel r.s.v.p bk90 fine is our weapon of choice; it is a fine tip ballpoint pen that we love sketching with. with a smooth consistent thin line, it gives the drawings a clean and confident feeling.
we love gouache and watercolors, but they take too long to dry. our favorite are chartpak ad markers. it’s none of those dual head crap. its sinlge faceted nib gives 3 distinct line characters from crisply artriculated tight comps to expressive broad strokes.
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,….
‘futuristic and romantic’ is achieved in the house installation, inversion, by dan havel & dean ruck at the art league houston in 2005. the tunnel is obviously futurustic, similar to the comme des garcon new york store, yet full of humanity.
the graphic language of a brand is like the voice of a person – it helps define who you are and it is one of the main things that people remembers about you. yves saint laurent did this early on in 1962 when he set up his business (p.27 in debut, isbn# 0810905612).
for us, the romantic side of our graphics is reflected in our love for art nouveau; the futuristic part is harder since the predicted futuristic sensitivity is rarely accurate (or we would’ve all be dressing like star trek by now). instead, research on contemporary art and the concepts of the artists are needed. so far, erwin wurm (the artist who swallowed the world isbn# 3775718664) seems interesting to us.
we are FUTURISTIC
lots of others are influenced by nicolas ghesquiére at balenciaga (so were we), but starting in fashion at the turn of the century means more for our interest in the future. less about looking like star trek, we want to create anew.
we are ATHLETIC
understanding anatomy and a modern way of active life, e.g. sport, fashion is here to help.
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