Bag Madness 101

After the Celine show, Taipei 101 seems to be set on becoming the regular home for new fashion events that can be termed 'exhibitions,' even if their aim is mainly commercial. The latest event in this row, featured in today's Taiwan News, is titled 'Bag Magic.'
The Taiwan issue of Vogue magazine is sponsoring the show, which basically features lots of well-known bags. There's the Loewe Amazona, the Escada Eluna, the Celine Trunkette and the Boogie bag, and Issey Miyake's Tube. They almost sound like cars that drove over from the nearby Taipei Auto Show.
The picture in the Taiwan News shows a blue Dolce & Gabbana bag exhibited inside what looks like a giant transparent replica of the same bag. It looks promising, though I won't be able to judge the show until I go there myself, either tomorrow or next Monday. But that's something for Bag Madness 101 part 2.

The Curse of the Paragon

If you hate shopping, whatever you do, stay away from the area of Bangkok known as Siam. I took my wife for a two-day shopping trip to Bangkok, and we "did" five malls a day.
The latest addition is what must be Thailand's largest mall, the Siam Paragon next to Siam Skytrain station, and also next to the Siam Center mall, which itself lies next to the Siam Discovery mall. On the other side of the Paragon, meanwhile, work is in progress on the renovation of the Central World department store, which should open in May.
So you get the drift, this must be one of the highest concentration of shops anywhere in Asia, and maybe the world.
But back to the new giant on the block, the Siam Paragon. A huge shiny Christmas tree and fountains which just pop up out of the ground at unexpected intervals were the major attractions outside for the Christmas weekend crowds. Inside, management has tried to make up for the absence of shops on the lower floors by showing off supercars such as a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, a Maserati Quattroporte, and so on. The shops that haven't opened yet are mostly the Western superbrands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton. On the second floor, I also noted that Spain's famous Zara chain is planning a large store, the first in any Asian city I visited recently. Higher up inside the Paragon, there is a department store which includes all the brands that are famous in the West and in other Asian countries - like DKNY, Esprit, G2000, Jessica - and those that are present in any Bangkok mall: Greyhound and its affiliate Playhound, Flynow, Issue with its Indian-inspired dresses, Senada, Classic Model, Miphosis, and my wife's favorite, Pena House.
The last one is also present in at least two other malls. At the first one we visited, the Emporium, my wife bought a beige knit jacket. By coincidence, when we visited the Siam Center, the shop that won my wife's attention was again a Pena House, where she bought a Missoni-lookalike blouse and a white-blue-purple poncho.
For those not into pure fashion, most of Bangkok's malls also have pleasant stores full of typical handicraft, textiles, ceramics, cushions, bone china, wood products and anything you can think of with colorful and tasteful local designs. Exotique Thai at the Paragon and the Emporium are especially memorable, and then there's the famous Jim Thompson chain.
For modern design and simple goods, there's the name Propaganda, which sells modern knickknacks in various colors and sizes.
And finally on the topic of Bangkok malls, the hard-to-find 6th floor at the Emporium houses a design center with a library and occasional exhibitions.
All in all, Bangkok houses an amazing collection of shops and malls in all price categories, and if you do like shopping, then you need to budget at least two days to see it all. And before I forget, for those not into glitzy malls, but who don't mind haggling and the absence of air conditioning, there is also a place for you: the Chatuchak weekend market next to Mo Chit Skytrain station.

From Madame Figaro to Zara

So I bought the December issue of Taiwan's Madame Figaro, mostly because the delectable Shu Qi was on its cover. I was expecting a full-fledged interview with the star, but instead I found only a couple of pictures of her posing in Louis Vuitton clothes in Spain, and a very short, less than one page, article about her.
In the fashion department, the magazine was equally disappointing. There was a lot about fashionable hotels all over the world - very nice, but not what I was looking for - and things about food.
Luckily, there was some fashion after all: a profile of the Etro family. Their colorful designs are on sale at Taipei 101, and my wife thinks they are the new Missoni. The "People Are Talking About" feature introduces lots of small news items, such as the opening of Taiwan design house Shiatzy's store on Shanghai's fashionable Bund. There are also loads of images of coats, and reports about Fendi, 60 years Celine, and the Taiwan visit of Kenzo's chief designer, stories also featured in other fashion magazines this month. All in all, this month's edition of Madame Figaro is a bit too much style and not enough fashion for me. But then, I guess it's a trend. Have you noticed how model Sun Cheng-hua's Sunday night show is also showing more and more home interiors, restaurants and the like, rather than featuring clothes, bags and designers?
For those of you who have ever shopped in Europe's main streets, Zara will not be a new name. The Spanish chain store has achieved quite a positive reputation with its quickly renewed collections and breezy shops. There is no Zara in Taiwan yet, but somebody's trying. While strolling on Chunghsiao East Road section 4 yesterday, I was handed a flyer about a sale of Zara items by a "discount outlet" called Tote. The place looked like a hole in the wall waiting for a new owner. Let's hope the real Zara has plans to establish a real store in Taipei.

Harper's Bazaar 16

The Taiwan edition of Harper's Bazaar is celebrating its 16th anniversary, and I got a chance to see its December edition this morning.
For this special edition, the magazine gets to profile its choices for the 16 top designers to watch out for, and at No. 1 comes, perhaps not unexpected, Gucci's Frida Giannini. The magazine also has profiles of Burberry's Christopher Bailey - by coincidence the No. 2 on the list - Ferragamo, Issey Miyake's chief designer Naoki Takizawa, who visited Taiwan recently, and Mikimoto jewelry. Not being a jewelry expert, I only recently noticed that name at the Mitsukoshi department stores, but Harper's Bazaar tells us the brand has been around in Japan for more than a century.
The December issue also profiles some of the latest trends - "black chic" as style of the month, and suede. There are suede gloves from Louis Vuitton at 20,000 New Taiwan dollars (around 650 US dollars), suede coats, suede skirts, and a great suede orange bag from Bottega Veneta for 62,600 NT dollars (almost 2,000 US dollars).
If Lin Chi-ling is your thing - she's most decidedly not mine - then Harper's Bazaar offers you her impersonations of some great ladies from Hollywood history, including the two Hepburns and Marilyn.
The ads are also worth looking at, even if they're not exclusive to this magazine: cloth bags from Louis Vuitton with names of cities, an extremely colorful Fendi bag, Yves Saint Laurent with a buffalo horn, and a Prada cloth bag with a red leather lining and the new, large classical logo.
Harper's Bazaar also tells us that Belgian designer Martin Margiela has opened the 10th of his international stores or "Maisons" near Warner Village in Taipei, an excuse for me to visit it soon. And talking of magazines, the latest edition of Madame Figaro has Taiwan's Shu Qi on its cover. I hope to report about that issue in my next posting, even though it might fit in better on a blog about the sultry actress.

The Louis Vuitton Job

Louis Vuitton had a happy day in Hong Kong with supermodel Gisele Bundchen and chief designer Marc Jacobs present at the opening of its biggest store in Asia, but for Louis Vuitton in Taipei, it was a far less happier occasion.
The store on Dunhua South Road received the visit of two burglars, who slammed in a window and ran off with 16 bags and accessories when the neighboring shop's security guards happen to pass by. Total value of the loot: more than 400,000 New Taiwan dollars, or some 13,000 US dollars.
The heist was vaguely reminiscent of a typhoon night breakin at the Chungshan North Road Gucci store a couple of months ago. As far as I know, the culprits of that theft were never caught. It just shows how popular brands, bags and logos are in Asia.
In the meantime, still no word on when Louis Vuitton's Chungshan North Road flagship store will reopen. And what kind of company bigwigs we can expect to show up in Taipei.

Celebrities Love Celine

I visited the Celine show at the Taipei 101 today. To freshen up your mind, the exhibition celebrates 60 years of the brand, which was founded in Paris by Celine Vilapia as a shoemaker for children.
The show is limited in size, but free, and offers a look at Celine dresses through the years. The theme of the show is actually all about celebrities, with clothes paired with pictures of stars wearing them. There's Madonna, Charlize Theron, Sophie Marceau - wearing a Celine at a jewelry event in, would you believe, Taipei - and also Asian superstars Faye Wong and Karen Mok. Karen actually wore my favorite, a bright orange dress which is classic and modern at the same time. You can't miss it, as soon as you enter the rather closed-off space, it shines on your left. I liked it so much, I voted for it in the lottery competition the company is organizing in tandem with the show. You fill in the number of your favorite celebrity dress and deposit the piece of paper at the Celine store one floor lower.
Apart from the dresses, the show has only one case devoted to bags - the Boogie bag, the Macadam, the Glam Dam, the American Sulky. Considering the popularity of bags and accessories, I wished they would have given us more of those to gaze at, but that's just a small detail. Anyway, the next time you're in the neighborhood of Taipei 101, go and see the show on the fourth floor, it gives you a bit of history of a brand that deserves to be better known.

Celine

A new fashion in fashionland is staging an exhibition to raise your profile. Armani and Prada did it overseas, Vivienne Westwood had her acclaimed retrospective in Taipei earlier this year.
And now it's Celine's turn. The Paris fashion house, now part of the LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton group, is celebrating its 60th anniversary. For the occasion, the brand has set up a small exhibition on Taipei 101's fourth floor. Yesterday, the show was not open to the public yet, so I'll have to wait until the weekend to visit it, but its scale looks rather small. The newspapers only speak about Celine's 2006 Spring/Summer collection.
The brand's new designer, Croatia's Ivana Omazic, is in Taiwan for the show, but so far I haven't seen her on TV, it must be the local election fever now gripping Taiwan is keeping her news conferences and interviews off the main news stations. The fashion news shows over the weekend should feature her, though.
And speaking of visitors, Omazic is not the only one. Next week, Taipei will welcome the director of one of the world's most prestigious fashion schools, London's Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design. Jane Rapley will hold a news conference Tuesday, also no doubt in the hope of attracting more Taiwanese students to her institution. Graduates from the school include superstars of modern fashion like John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Phoebe Philo, and Zac Posen.