My First Louis Vuitton

I mentioned it before, the Louis Vuitton “flagship” store on Taipei’s Chungshan North Road has closed down for conversion into an even bigger store. But in an effort to keep customers coming to the area, the French fashion giant is running a “temporary” store just north of the original site, near the Ambassador Hotel. Visiting there today, I must say nothing looks temporary here. The shop carries most elements of the Louis Vuitton product line, not just the cherry, logo and other leather bags, but also dresses and shoes.
My interest there today was for a replacement for my wallet, which was rapidly disintegrating. So I asked the sales assistant to show me a range of Louis Vuitton wallets. There was the brandnew blue one, which I feared might look a bit too feminine. At 15,500 New Taiwan dollars – say 500 US dollars – it was the priciest of the collection, but not by much. A black leather wallet went for 14,200 NT$, smaller and older models in green and brown went down to 13,000 and 11,000 NT$. All of them seemed to have been made in Spain, not in France. I eventually settled for the black one at 14,200 NT$. It’s just large enough to stuff it with 1,000 NT$ bills and with my limited collection of credit cards, national health insurance card, and subway card. Just like all the others, it bears the LV logo, but not too large, and without the flowery design found on the handbags. Service was excellent, I gave my Chinese name just because I don’t like spelling out Western words, paid in cash, waited a while for the nicely packaged wallet and receipt, and there I went out the door, flaunting a small dark brown paper bag with the words “Louis Vuitton, Maison Fondee en 1854, Paris.”

Flagship

In Taipei these days, the word “flagship” doesn’t refer to nautical adventures, but to high-level shopping. Fashion houses are busy erecting “flagship stores” all over the Taiwanese capital where they can shoppers to buy their brands in a sophisticated environment, and without the competition too close by.
LVMH’s Louis Vuitton is no stranger to flagship stores in Asia. The opening of its shop on Shanghai’s fashionable Nanjing West Road last year took on the aura of an international event, with even the Taiwanese media carrying reports for days on end. Having the outside decked out as a Louis Vuitton suitcase helped catch those lenses. Time’s latest special style supplement for Spring 2005 gave a similar star treatment to the Louis Vuitton store in Qingdao, the home of China’s most famous beer and of the sailing competition at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
And Taipei could be next. In Taiwan’s Chinese-language United Daily News, Yuan Ching reports on the temporary closure of the main Louis Vuitton store on Chungshan North Road, close to the Grand Formosa Regent Hotel, now a magnet for high-end brands like Loewe, Missoni, and recently, Chanel’s Black Pyramid I posted on just a while ago.
The store will close for up to year while it is expanded into three floors. Next year, the flagship store – you guessed it – will reopen and house more than just handbags. The French company will sell jewelry and glasses as well.
While works are in progress, dedicated LV fans will still go shopping at the company’s Taipei 101 outlet for leather and watches, and the Fuhsing shop for shoes and bags, and the Dunhua store for general products.
And this month, a temporary replacement for the Chungshan flagship store will be in business, selling the “Monograme Cerise” bags as well as engrave the Chinese character for wealth (“Fu”) on certain items as a special souvenir. To be continued.

Fashion News, Dateline Taipei

As I intend fashion news from Taiwan to be one of the regular features of this blog, I should also let you know more about the situation of fashion news here, and about where my competitors are.
Paloma Picasso visited the island this week. She designed jewelry for Tiffany, so the local branch of that world-class jeweler invited her to visit Taipei. The trouble is : her trip featured barely in the local media. I just saw a brief report on one of the six-or-so news stations, and that was it. There was no forewarning of her visit, either in the shape of articles in the daily newspapers, or the mention of a news conference or event with Paloma on the daily list of such events published by the Central News Agency. News services islandwide look at this list each morning, and often base themselves on it when sending out news crews.
And who are the fashion news reporters in Taiwan?
Outside the obvious magazines like the local versions of Vogue and Miss Figaro, there is the excellent Yuan Ching in the United Daily News. On television, there’s model Sun Cheng-hwa with my favorite program about style and fashion each Sunday night on TVBS. Rival ERA TV has Patty Hou, an anchor often the target of gossip lately, with a fashion news rubrique that is broadcast all too irregularly for me to catch each episode. Patty’s show can also seem a bit behind the ball with events. On Friday, she was still talking about the opening of the Bulgari store at Taipei 101 more than a week ago.
Turning to the island’s low-profile English-language press, the Taiwan News began a couple of months ago with two pages of fashion every Saturday, though most of that space is filled with stories written in the United States.
The Taipei Times originally dealt with fashion occasionally on its entertainment pages on Fridays, but it recently launched a Style supplement on Thursdays. After a rather weak start dealing with nail coloring and tattooing, it looks like it finally is getting off the ground. The Taipei Times clubbing correspondent David Momphard wrote a review of the latest fashion show by Taiwan’s own Nadia Lin, and we hope the paper’s emphasis on Taiwan fashion stories continues along that line.
But my own hope is that I can join those luminaries and bring you more news and information – not gossip ‘cause that’s not me – about Taiwan style and fashion on this very blog.
Before I can do that, I’ll have to start attending a lot more news conferences and fashion shows than I am doing now. And I’ll have to keep juggling my fashion interests with my equally strong appetites for screenplays, food and reading. But maybe, that’s for another post, or even another blog.