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.