Tuesday, August 16, 2005

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.

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