Reading The Curse

I reached page 100 today of the book I told you about in my previous post, "The Branding Curse" by Lynn H. Shih. First of all, let me put one thing right about the author, she is no longer with Louis Vuitton Taiwan, but she did run the company for many years. That is reflected in the book, since many of the pictures show LV bags. The Chinese-language book, published by Taiwan's Cultuspeak, starts up slowly with a theoretical approach to fashion, analyzing its basic elements, especially the concept of what's new. It began to get exciting when Shih described the operations of Spanish retailer Zara as the model for "new." As readers of business magazines know, the company is famous for introducing new designs at a breakneck speed. I've now reached the chapter where Shih describes Louis Vuitton's own strategies to rejuvenate and avoid becoming a "classic" only fit for a museum. To be continued as I proceed with my reading.

Taipei 101 Fashions

While it was pouring outside last Sunday, our Eslite fashion course group went touring on the 3rd floor of Taipei 101, where most luxury stores are concentrated, as opposed to the more mass-retail chains on the lower levels.
Our tour started of course at the Louis Vuitton. As usual on weekends, we had to line up at the door before the attendants even let us in. The most famous element of the store is the so-called bar, a line of bar stools where the customers can browse through the catalogues or take a look at the products. All around the shop, a variety of Louis Vuitton items are exhibited, some of them high up, the smaller ones in glass compartments inside tables. What first struck me, is how little cherries are on display. Despite its success and appeal, Takashi Murakami's Monogramme Cerise series is almost completely absent from the shop.
A marked contrast was formed by the Gucci store. As soon as you enter, you have a whole wall on your left absolutely filled with products with the Double G logo. And that's not all. The other products on show, even the ties, play the logo card to the max: Double G, Single G, different stylings, but it's all the logo that counts. The new collection known as La Pelle Guccissima has a place of its own.
Our tour also took us to Dior, with its windows made to look like mirrors at a theater's dressing rooms. The Prada store has a clean light green look, and the typical black items with the upside down triangle. Some of the newest items have a different logo, still the name Prada, but inside a more classical-looking frame. On show was also a black dress with knitted bits and pieces stuck on top. From Prada we walked over to related brand Miu Miu, with its fireworks of reds and other flashy designs. Celine was the anti-example we visited, a modest store, conservative, with a new but rather vague logo looking like a medieval shield. Some of the handbags looked like Louis Vuittons from a distance, relieved of their logos.
The tour focused more on store design and environment than on the latest lines, but was still an interesting look at one of the top locations in Taiwan's fashion world.
During our tour, I also noticed that Coach are planning to open a store inside Taipei 101. Other new shops to join the Taipei scene probably next month: a Gucci at the Breeze Center, the renovated Louis Vuitton flagship store on the north side of the Grand Formosa Regent Hotel, and the Gioia Pan boutique on its south side.
Tomorrow I'll buy a rare new Taiwanese book about fashions and brands, "The Branding Curse" by Lynn H. Shih, who made her name organizing exclusive parties for Louis Vuitton Taiwan, where she still works. At more than 400 pages and only in Chinese, it'll take some time for me to work my way through it, so don't expect a thorough review too soon. I'll give you a quick overview of the book in the next few days, though.

Brand The Magazine

As promised, here's a short review of a Taiwanese magazine completely dedicated to fashion brands. I bought my first edition of "Brand" last month, just to have a look.
The publication starts off with a series of pictures of new items, four pages of bags, shoes and watches, before continuing with news of fashion parties in Taiwan and pictures from the European catwalks. At the end of the magazine is a similar review of fashion events, unfortunately all of them past. There is no list of upcoming events, where people like me could try their hand at gatecrashing.
The July edition had a special report about Hong Kong, which was little more than a walkabout around international boutiques. I couldn't find anything particular about Hong Kong designing talent.
The cover story dealt with the different tastes in brands of 20-, 30-, and 40-somethings in Taiwan, but the lists didn't come up with much differences. Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Burberry filled each of the top-threes, and each time in that order. Stories deeper inside the magazine introduced various types of shoes, presented Gucci's new La Pelle Guccissima series of products, and profiled Gianfranco Ferre's latest designs.
"Brand" introduced several of the top boutiques at Taipei 101, incidentally the itinerary I will be following next Sunday with the teacher and classmates from my Eslite fashion course if no typhoon shows up to wreck the party.
After summer accessories, the magazine devoted several pages of attention to beauty care, which is where they lost me somewhat, before recovering with a profile of DJ SL and his favorite fashion items. Singer Sandee Chan and fashion designer Andrew GN closed off the July issue.
My conclusion: strong on pictures (I liked the piece about Guccissima), rather weak on text, and too much advertising, but hey, they have to make a living. Whatever my rating of the magazine, I will keep watching out for it, and try to get hold of it again as soon as the next - September's - edition is out, just to report on its contents here.
By the way, the publisher of "Brand" magazine, and of several tiny booklets about fashion items, is Taiwan's Sun Color Culture Publishing Co., Ltd.

After Paul Smith

My wife saw Paul Smith, and the verdict is: she still prefers Missoni. The Paul Smith boutique at Taipei's Breeze Center is allright, but my wife was rather disappointed about the range of products on offer. First of all, Paul Smith may be colorful, but it's still predominantly a man's brand. The bags with pictures of Mini's - the 1960s original, and not the 21st century BMW-produced retro version - with Union Jacks don't really inspire her.
On our tour of the Breeze, my wife did find a couple of stores that grabbed her attention. She found her favorite burst of color at an unlikely place, the usually buttoned-down Ralph Lauren. He now offers very colorful, almost Hawaiian or Caribbean cashmere-design tops.
My wife also appreciated the sales at Salvatore Ferragamo - clothing, bags and sports shoes - and Calvin Klein - anything but underwear. Both stores inside the Breeze are preparing to close and/or reconstruct.
Talking about construction, Taiwanese designer Gioia Pan is looking to open a store next month at another center of luxury in Taipei, the neighborhood of the Grand Formosa Regent Hotel. Pan's new shop will be situated on the alley on the hotel's south side, next door to the IS Coffee, and just a short walk from Dunhill, Missoni, Marc Jacobs and Salvatore Ferragamo.
And finally, if I am posting twice today, that's because I finally have a new computer, a BenQ S52 Joybook. My next challenge: fix my digital camera so that I can at last add pictures to this blog.

The new Gucci

The Asian Wall Street Journal is devoting its Column One today, Wednesday, to the new Gucci, the company led by ice cream manager Robert Polet since the departure of Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole.
The highly interesting report written by Alessandra Galoni mentions the following new trends at the House of Gucci: new items will have to move faster, more products will carry a logo, the product range will be expanded, and the public will have a greater say in the range of products, and a number of older styles and logos will be resurrected.
My first reaction to this, that it could pose a threat to the brand's standing, in other words damage its exclusivity, and send it at least some way down the path Pierre Cardin took a long time ago. "Absolutely stupid," Polet tells the reporter, who must have had the same reaction I had. The report also says he wants to launch Gucci ice buckets, clogs and sneakers. If that's not taking the brand far and wide, I don't know what is.
Less threatening is his plan to shorten the time it takes for Gucci products to reach the stores. Polet apparently compared Gucci's five-times-a-year collection change with Spanish retail group Zara, highly successful in Europe thanks to its frequent updating.
As to letting the public having a greater say, Polet has enrolled consultants to organize focus groups.
Frida Giannini's promotion from accessories designer to women's designer is directly related to another change at the new Gucci, the relaunching of old ideas: the return of the Flora pattern, the Gucci crest coat of armor, the horse-bit symbol. By the way - not mentioned in the Journal report, but in Taiwan magazine Brands - the horse bit features prominently in Gucci's newest series of bags, known as La Pelle Guccissima.
As I said, I'm rather skeptical about some of the plans mentioned above, and I fear they really could mean a cheapening of the brand, but let's give Robert Polet a chance to prove that yes, I am absolutely stupid.

Paul Smith, here we come!

My Taiwanese wife likes clothes with colorful lines, so it's no surprise to hear that her favorite designer is ... Missoni. I have no data about their sales in Taiwan, but they seem to have been on a downward slide. One store here in Taipei, on Kuangfu South Road, closed last year. There's still one next to the Formosa Regent, in an alley off Chungshan North Road, but my wife says she bought a dress there once which was not a true Missoni, more an imitation - which is not the same as a counterfeit, but still. And then Taipei 101 has a Missoni Sport boutique, with similar scarves, dresses, knits and sweaters, but a reputation that was damaged when police found a credit card scam run by people at Missoni Sport and the nearby Aquascutum.

So while my wife is still a fan of Missoni-style designs, she's been broadening her horizons lately. While passing through Beijing recently, she noticed the flashy shirts and bags at one boutique inside Wangfujing's Oriental Plaza. The brand: Paul Smith. She wanted to know whether Taipei offered this designer, not having seen any Paul Smith boutiques around Taipei 101, Sogo, the Regent or any other frequent shopping destination. Well, she must have overlooked one shoppers' paradise: the Breeze Center seems to be the home to the only Paul Smith store in Taipei, and maybe in all of Taiwan. So that's where we'll be spending at least part of our post-typhoon Saturday night.