The EcoChic Design Award is a sustainable fashion design competition challenging emerging fashion designers to create mainstream clothing with minimal textile waste. The 2013 cycle is open to designers in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, UK, France, Belgium and Germany. Following months of inspired design and rigorous judging, eight finalists will compete for career-changing prizes.
Visit the official site of Eco Chic Design Award
TICT is proud to present the fourth installment of Shanghai’s Design, Art & Fashion Fair.
DAFF is Shanghai’s biggest biannual lifestyle community event. Aimed at giving China’s creative leaders and rising talent a platform to interact, share ideas, and promote new projects, the event gives an unprecedented opportunity to connect with and inspire the public at large.
As Chinese designers struggle to gain credibility in both their domestic and global fashion industries, one high-profile buyer has taken interest: a member of the Saudi royal family.
According to a recent China Daily report, a Saudi princess has ordered a dress from Chinese designer NE·TIGER after seeing one of the label’s designs in an exhibition in Riyadh in April. The made-to-measure luxury gown will reportedly be blue “with golden dragon embroidery,” and will be constructed by three designers sent to Riyadh.
Read the full article at Jing Daily
Three years ago, Chico Wang was a successful visual merchandiser at Lane Crawford, where he designed the visual displays for top global designers such as Alexander McQueen, Christian Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent. However, Wang, who has a degree from the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, decided he wanted to someday be one of the designers of the clothing for which he was designing displays. In 2011, he took a chance and went on China’s version of Project Runway, a show called Creative Sky (创意星空).
Read the interview at Jing Daily
Ada Fung is a fashion PR, working as an account manager at Karla Otto Asia. Fung is a graduate of Central Saint Martins and the London College of Fashion. Having studied womenwear design, Fung previously worked at Julie Verhoeven and was editorial assistant at SHOWstudio in 2004. The following year she made a transition from editorial to fashion management by assisting Camilla Lowther at Camilla Lowther Management. In 2008 Fung moved back to China to work as a bookings editor at Vogue China.
Whilst in China, Fung worked on GQ China pre-publication and was a styling assistant at Max Mara’s ‘Coat!’ catwalk in Beijing. In 2009 she became fashion features editor at Modern Weekly China (for Beijing and Shanghai) before returning to London to assist Penny Martin at The Gentlewoman.
During her time there, she helped produce a shoot for Fantastic Man in Beijing. Fung then started work as a contributing edtor for Hong Kong-based magazine Obscura. Since 2011 she has been at Karla Otto Asia as an account manager for Hong Kong and Bei Jing.
Via SHOWStudio
Shanghai Fashion Week, is a fashion event held two times every year in Shanghai, each time lasting for seven days which is a part of Shanghai International Fashion Culture Festival which usually lasts for a month.
Supported by the Ministry of Commerce of P.R.China, Shanghai Fashion Week is a business and cultural event hosted by the Shanghai Municipal Government. With more and more young designers and models, Shanghai Fashion Week is aiming to build up an international and professional platform, to attract top design talents from all over the world.
The current organizer of Shanghai Fashion Week is Shanghai Textile Group, who is in the center of the textile and clothing network in China.In cooperation with many consulates of other countries in Shanghai, Shanghai Fashion Week also invites many international designers to come present their latest work. It’s also a venue for those designers who are targeting China.
As part of Fashion week, Mode Shanghai puts on the Fashion Trade show, offering an expansive window into China’s vast geography of regions and markets, while providing a channel for export sales of international brands and China’s emerging designers. In 2013 Mode Shanghai will collaborate with ENK International, the leading fashion apparel trade show producers headquartered in New York.
Mode Shanghai 2013 will be held from 12-14 March 2013. It will cover approximately 25,000 sqm at the state-of-the-art Shanghai New International Expo Centre in Pudong, Shanghai.
Visit the official site of Shanghai Fashion Week
Julius takes inspiration from Zen and other aspects of Buddhism, an influence that stems from Horikawa’s forbidden and clandestine journey into Tibet from China and subsequent stay at a monastery in the region. Julius has showed at Paris Mens Fashion Week since 2008.
Via showstudio.com
Vera Wang, the queen of bridal wear, opens a two-story, 850 square meters store in Shanghai – her largest flagship store – to controversy.
Wang’s first China store charges a non-refundable fee of 3,000 yuan (US$482) to try on bridal gowns for 90 minutes. Furthermore, potential clients will have to make appointments “several weeks” in advance, according to The Global Times.
If the customer purchases a wedding gown, the fee will be deducted from the purchase; otherwise, the fee can be used toward other items in the store.
The company indicated that the “trying or fitting fee” is a way to protect its designs. Photo-taking or filming is also ban in the store.
This practice of charging a “trying fee” is not new as some Hong Kong bridal shops have similar practices. However, for a company who wants to do business in China, this policy will not endear the company to Chinese clients who are already sensitive to disparities they see between shopping experiences overseas and in China. The mandatory “trying fee” will likely be a hard sell.
The Xintiandi store displays 80 dresses with prices from 30,000 yuan (US$4815) to 300,000 yuan (US$48,174) and features three dressing rooms and one VIP room.
photo credit: vera wang
Via red-luxury.com
Taking in fittings and model castings, backstage show-day chaos, and the wonders of Soho and Shoreditch nightlife, celebrated young Chinese designer Xander Zhou documents his intimate experience of debuting at the inaugural London Collections: Men.
Exhibiting his minimalist take on menswear in the capital for the first time, the Beijing-based aesthete moved into the illustrious St. Martins Lane Hotel a month before fashion week and set up a temporary studio in the West End to finish the preparations. The designer has shown 11 collections in China, launched his eponymous label in 2007 and has dressed leading celebrities like actresses Zhou Xun, Fan Bingbing, actor Chen Kun and Edison Chen. Zhou closed the Friday evening of London Collections: Men with Fleurdelism—his spring/summer collection of deconstructed silk suits and paneled satin T-shirts, inspired by boy scouts and lilies.
“Design is an international language; it doesn’t matter where you’re from, it matters what you do,” he explains. “My generation’s background is very complicated—I was born in China, I studied in the Netherlands, I came back to China again. I travel a lot so I’ve seen many things, and I think this generation of Chinese young people is more confident to share its ideas with the world.”
Via www.nowness.com
Chris Liu is a fashion designer living and working in London. Following his MA in Fashion Design at the London College of Fashion, Liu worked as a design consultant for Burberry Prorsum before founding his eponymous label. Liu has been recognised as one of the top in a new generation of Chinese designers by Vogue China. Liu’s clothes are sold at Joseph in London, Maria Luisa, Paris and Harvey Nichols, Hong Kong
PICTURES SHOT WITH HASSELBLAD H4D / 40 www.hasselbladusa.com
Via behance.net
Bare-faced and beguiling, current fashion world darling Xiao Wen Ju lets her guard down for renowned Dutch photographer Dana Lixenberg, unwinding after a gruelling Fashion Week schedule of fittings and shows in this series of intimate and raw portraits.
“It’s always a bit challenging to do a natural portrait of a model,” says Lixenberg, who shot Ju in Manhattan’s Lafayette House hotel. “Somehow youth and beauty dominate, so it almost helped that she was exhausted and had come from a rehearsal.”
Twenty-year-old Xiao Wen, who hails from the ancient city of Xi’an in China, signed with IMG in 2010 and quickly climbed the ranks both in her home country and internationally, featuring on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar China that May as well as walking for designers including Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Prada the following year, ultimately scoring Marc Jacobs’ Spring campaign in 2012.
“There’s a playful element to her,” says Lixenberg, who has shot for publications including The New Yorker, Newsweek and The New York Times Magazine and exhibited in solo shows at Amsterdam’s FOAM and the Nederlands Fotomuseum. “She looks like a little dancer: petite, almost Audrey Hepburnish and very slim and flexible like a kitten. She had a quiet charisma, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it popped up in film.”
Via www.nowness.com
Hong Kong and China-based retailer Lane Crawford selected Nick Knight to direct and capture their first ever moving image campaign. The resulting fashion film and imagery – starring Asian models Ming Xi, Xiao Wen Ju and Wang Xiao – features sumptuous looks from A/W 2012, including pieces by Yohji Yamamoto, Celine and Balenciaga, carefully curated by acclaimed stylist Edward Enninful.
Via showstudio.com
It’s no secret that fashion’s most dynamic new markets can be found in Asia and the Middle East. This begs the question, if that is where couture is being purchased and craved, why should it not also be where it is made and shown?
To affirm SHOWstudio’s commitment to exploring new fashion frontiers, Marie Schuller headed to Singapore for French Couture Week 2012. Following in the footsteps of our ‘Asian Couture Week 2012′ project, this coverage unpicks the work of designers from areas like Bangkok, China, Hong Kong, Japan and France in fashion film, candid post-show interviews and essays by Sue Wen Quek and Bobby Luo.
Via showstudio.com
Emerging faces Rui Wang, Liu Chang, Hao Yun Xiang and the firmly established Zhao Lei are profiled in Thomas Giddings’ elegant short filmed during the spring/summer 2013 menswear shows in Paris. Inspired by an enigmatic scene in Paul Schrader’s 1980 film American Gigolo, Giddings filmed discreetly in order to capture both the models’ true personalities and the minutiae of the everyday.
“I wanted to capture the downtime and follow each of the boys in a subtle way,” says the photographer, “telling the story through their characters, rather than through the clothes.”
Giddings began his career shooting behind the scenes at fashion shows forPOP and i-D, and has since gone on to photograph for British Vogue, Twin and Russian Interview, as well as hold numerous exhibitions of his work. Demonstrating the growing influence of China on the fashion industry, the four boys have risen over the past few seasons to work with some of today’s most influential designers, including Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Kris Van Assche for Dior and Dolce & Gabbana. Giddings’ Paris short features intimate access at high profile runway shows for Louis Vuitton, Dior, Dries Van Noten and Mugler, offering unique insight into the usual high-octane sheen.
“I work differently to a lot of other photographers backstage,” explains Giddings. “It’s about communicating existing moments rather than stepping in to direct.”
Via www.nowness.com
