Blue Gold

Taiwan's press has discovered the new fashion, and it's jeans, or more generally, denim. During my most recent stroll through Taipei 101, I discovered Christian Dior's take on the blue cloth: a combination of their recent logo - the word Dior cropped closely together - with the color orange. And a winning combination it is. I find it the most attractive motif since Louis Vuitton's monogram and its Takashi Murakami-inspired variations. They've applied it not just to dresses, also to bags. The only odd or off thing about the Dior pieces though, is that plastic-looking orange tag that hangs from the bags. It looks too cheap in comparison with the "old," more traditional metal CD letters. And then there are the long orange stockings with the name Dior in white.
In Taipei, the Dior orange and denim collection seems to be the preserve of the Taipei 101 store. At the Regent Gallery, under the Grand Formosa Regent, there is no trace of it in the windows. At nearby Chanel's, the bags show cartoonish maps of Paris in pastel colors. Also original, but less to my taste, and unlikely to survive as a main motif.
Back to denim, Louis Vuitton of course also has an attractive collection, combining its monogram with the various shapes and sizes of bags it is famous for. Even some of Taiwan's top designers have joined the denim drive, with Demos Chiang - a designer of everything from rings to watches - presenting bags and jeans in the blue gold of today.

And the Pope wears Prada too!

"The Devil Wears Prada" must be one of the most famous novels about the fashion world and its eccentricities. And now the international media have found out that Pope Benedict XVI wears Prada too! At least on his feet. Wonder if he knows about the book, I'm sure he doesn't.
And Prada is not just the devil's favorite fashion brand, it's also designed by a communist, at least Miuccia Prada says she is. Yet another reason why you wouldn't expect that brand to be worn by a Catholic religious leader with a reputation as a hardline conservative.
But back to what the Pope actually likes wearing. His Pradas are a pair of red loafers, rather incongruous and flashy with the white cassock I see him wearing in the pictures in Time, Taiwan's Liberty Times and other publications.
Benedict apparently also likes Tod's, another Italian brand, and yes, that pair is also red. His favorite glasses are signed Gucci.
The Pope may be German, but at least, he sticks to the top brands of his adoptive country, Italy. What next? Benedict XVI replacing a disgraced Kate Moss?

No Carnival for Kenneth

Kenneth Yen is one of Taiwan's most fashionable men. He runs the Yulon Group, the local manufacturer of Nissan and Mitsubishi cars, but he is also one of the few Taiwanese to own a Maybach, the supercar from Mercedes. He usually appears at news conferences and in magazines dressed in Armani.
But sharp clothes are both his dream and his nightmare, today's Liberty Times reports. In 1999, Yen bought a stake in Carnival, a prominent chain of Taiwanese stores selling suits. But the investment has cost him millions, maybe even a billion, the newspaper says. I would suggest part of the problem is the chain's image. The stores look overly conservative, more the domain of graying Japanese businessmen and government officials than a second home for sharp entrepreneurs and snazzy upwardly mobile men of the world. Carnival could even learn a bit from some of the cheaper chains, like G2000 and Michel Rene, who look a lot more inviting to the passerby thanks to their wide window fronts and colorful windows.
Yen has made one smart move, which was to take over the Taiwan 'dealership' - to borrow a word from his other line of business - for Giorgio Armani. Expensive, but classy. While I wish any businessperson success, what I would like to see personally, is that Yen gets Giorgio over here on a visit to promote the brand, and even better, to open the Armani retrospective that has visited the West here in Taiwan. If Vivienne Westwood can show at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, so could Armani. And maybe Yen could even ferry the glitterati to the exhibition in a fleet of his Nissan Teanas or Mitsubishi Grunders. Just a thought.

Remaking Louis Vuitton

There's a new fashion in Taiwan: you buy a fashionable brand item, preferably a bag, you break it or damage it one way or another, and then you go to the store to complain, preferably with a whole camera team or even a bunch of thugs in tow to threaten the store employees.
It happened several times recently, and the LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton group seems to be the favorite target. Today, a Celine store was visited by a lady who had bought a bag in Macao and found the bag disassembling after carrying it just twice. To be fair to the lady, she didn't bring any gangsters to the store, only a TV crew.
That was not the case a couple of weeks ago down south, in Taichung if I remember well, where a gruff man turned up at a Louis Vuitton, claiming the cut across his bag had occurred
only weeks after having bought the object. A whole bunch of dirty-looking thin thugs chewing betelnut and wearing black T-shirts crowded around the store in a mall, making sure passersby saw what was happening. However reasonable the guy's complaint might have been, using thug tactics didn't win any sympathy from me, and I hope not from Louis Vuitton either.
As a result of those and other recent cases - these media reports always come in waves - Louis Vuitton Taiwan has been emphasizing its aftersales service. Products bought outside of Taiwan can also be exchanged on the island, if the customer can come up with the receipt of course. If you're not satisfied about something you bought, you can return it within one week, if the problem is a fault in the object you bought, then you have one month. Anything that's ordered to be made especially for a client, can be repaired anytime, whether one year or 50 years after it was first sold by the company. Taiwan apparently has about 100 people who had Louis Vuitton products made to order, a recent report by Yuan Ching in the United Daily News said.

Sogo Weekend

Last weekend was the Sogo weekend: the first weekend of sales at the 14-something temple to shopping that dominates Taipei's Chunghsiao East Road, Section 4.
As usual, the crowds were elbowing each other outside long before opening hours. As usual, they usually went for the expensive cosmetics on the first floor. As usual, some shoppers spent over a million New Taiwan dollars. And as usual, each day features different exclusives at special prices. When you read this, you're already too late for the Celine boogie bag at about 15,000 New Taiwan dollars (500 US dollars) instead of 21,000. They only ten bags available.
The latest I heard about, in today's evening newspaper, is about a Fendi bag up for grabs.
But instead of the throngs at the Sogo, I went to the Breeze. My wife has a taste for color and the Breeze Center features Paul Smith and Miu Miu, two brands which are generous with orange, pink, purple and all my wife's favorites. Her taste for winter is olive green, by the way. Quite by chance, we happened to pass by the new Gucci store when they were preparing for their "early spring" show, with celebrities and cameras in attendance. Didn't see the show, but the media reported black-and-white was the main theme of the collection.

Vogue November

At the end of the past weekend I sat down at a coffee shop and got my hands on the November Taiwan edition of Vogue.
The monthly featured Patty Hou - the co-host of Sunday evening's Golden Horse Awards in Keelung. She's not really my type, but I just mention her in passing, because she's like the person of the month in the magazine.
Far more interesting is a review of trends for the winter, which today has finally arrived in Taiwan, with rain, wind and below 20 degrees Celsius temperatures. Vogue mentions ruffles, fur, and fruit designs on necklaces as the first trends. More important, the animal of the winter is the crocodile, as in crocodile handbags, shoes and boots, and even a Dior coat in crocodile leather. Looking beyond winter to the early spring, jeans with the Christian Dior logo are the hottest topic, according to Vogue. Maybe that has already arrived, because near the Idee department stores today, I saw a lady carrying a Dior logo denim handbag.
Vogue also features a garden look - for clothing that is, dresses and skirts with colorful checks, floral and tree designs, and a British country flavor.
And if you like shoes, well, the November Vogue is for you: it has pages and pages of all kinds of shoes, high-heel, flat, with brand logos, boots, any kind you can think of. 365 fetish, they call this series of pictures showing shoes.

Bangkok to Taipei

The first fashion-related book I probably ever bought was "Body and Soul" by Anita Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop. I guess I won't meet her, but Miss Roddick will be visiting Taiwan's Presidential Office tomorrow for a get-together with Vice President Annette Lu.
Talking of visits, I did a quickie tour of Bangkok's shopping malls last week. At the bottom of the heap is the huge MBK, a tall mall at the cheap end of the scale, with T-shirts, shoes, but also computers, furniture, watches, DVDs and tasty dried mangoes for the masses. Also near Siam Skytrain station are the unfinished Siam Center - which includes local brand Greyhound - and the Siam Discovery Center. That mall I found interesting not because of its Armani Exchange boutique, but because of the design stores near its top floor. Bought a tiny blue ceramic elephant flowerpot for the wife at the EGG boutique.
More Thai designs in higher price brackets are to be found at the Emporium, a mall further east along throbbing Sukhumvit Road. The top of the line shopping mall in Bangkok of course is the Gaysorn Plaza: marble floors and international names like Louis Vuitton and Gucci. While I was looking round for Thai-flavored design, the beautiful people were attending the launch of the Mercedes CLS downstairs.
All in all, Bangkok has everything for the fashion shopper: tourists can start with the busy Chatuchak market and the ubiquitous Jim Thompson store, mix with the people at the MBK, and to all the way to the top at Gaysorn, though the prices there probably won't differ too much from other world cities.
Back in Taipei, I of course landed in the middle of the continuing anniversary sales. Their point of gravity has now moved from Nanjing West Road out east to Taipei 101 and the Mitsukoshi stores.
The first relatively cold front of the mild Taiwan weather has passed, and shops are now emphasizing their wintery side, with sweaters and fur. Today's United Daily News has discovered a Russian theme in this winter's fashions. Even the bags from Fendi, Gianfranco Ferre and Moschino have either fur ends or Russian colors, the paper says.
Bags still capture the hearts of Taiwanese woman: when baseball player Wang Chien-min returned home for a holiday from the Yankees, the papers focused on his earring, and on his wife's 60,000 New Taiwan dollar Monogram Multicolore Louis Vuitton bag.
The Liberty Times went for the luxury bags. The one that's been catching my eye as well is that dark-blue, furry Louis Vuitton with the hardly-discernible monogram in black. The price: 145,000 NT dollars, or more than 4,000 US dollars. The paper also presents a bunch of snakeskin models from Stuart Weitzman, Pura Lopez and Clara Kasavina, all three of them less than common names in Taiwan.
The weekend is coming and that means more fashion and mall scouting after my Bangkok hiatus. And no, Gioia Pan and Louis Vuitton are still not ready with their stores next to the Grand Formosa Regent. Will they make it before Christmas? We'll see.