Sunday, April 03, 2005

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.

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