Isabelle and Chanel

Isabelle Wen, one of Taiwan’s most famous designers, held her 2005 Spring/Summer Show in Taipei this month. For her inspiration, she took the Amazon and Latin America. The show _ dubbed “South of the Equator” _ featured women with fiercely painted eyes carrying exotic birds on their arms. The colors of the dresses were mostly greyish blue, though some red also filtered through. Wen launched her brand in the mid-1980s and has since built her reputation as one of the strongest designers on the island, with a chain of stores to boot.
Talking of stores, strollers on Taipei’s Chungshan North Road used to the trees separating the busy thoroughfare from the Grand Formosa Regent Hotel got a rude shock recently. The trees have been hacked away to make way for a temple to luxury. A bizarre black pyramid-type structure bearing the magic word “Chanel.” Inside, a temporary exhibition of Chanel jewelry. The building looks like one of those temporary wooden structures set up in Taiwan to sell apartments. After a while, the structure is taken down, and the apartment building goes up in its place. What will happen to the Chanel pyramid after the exhibition closes on March 25? Come back and find out next week, when I will post about what’s inside the pyramid.