More Dior

Kate Moss graces a full page on the cover of the entertainment section in Taiwan's United Daily News today. But the reasons, this time at least, are not her drug exploits, but a fashion house that has kept her on.
Dior is opening a new shop inside the Breeze Center mall today, and Moss is Dior's face, so there. The shop is the French brand's ninth in Taiwan, with the best known of course being the one inside Taipei 101.
The new Breeze store offers all the latest bags, many of which can be ordered by customers, with a range of colors to choose from, and even a plate inside where you can have a name engraved. I won't tell you the prices for those bags, because, as the saying goes, if you have to ask the price, you probably can't afford them. I certainly can't.
Once Dior opens, it's time for a much larger outbreak of shopping fever to hit Taiwan. The new sales season - known as 'anniversary celebrations' - gets off to its first roaring go this very weekend, and will gradually expand to more and more stores the weekend after that. Only Sogo will be waiting until early November, no doubt because that's when their BR4 store - built on top of the Chunghsiao-Fuhsing MRT station - will open. The most typical phenomenon of this sales period is the 'spend so much money, get 10 percent extra' type of formula, especially for cosmetics, and this year is no exception.

Time for Style

Time magazine's widepage seasonal Style supplement is out again, free with this week's edition of the regular newsweekly.
As usual, the issue combines lots of pictures with profiles and reports. This time you get stories about celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker and Gwyneth Paltrow lending their name to cosmetics and other fashion products, and an overview of the most fashionable jeans around the world.
The profiles go really international: BCBG Max Azria, founded by a Frenchman in California, Ports 1861, moved from Canada to Xiamen just across the Taiwan Strait by two Italian-Libyan sisters, and Italy's colorful Diesel brand.
Time also names the color for this Autumn/Winter: mushroom! I'll be eating them, but I won't be wearing them.

Louis Vuitton The Cartoon

Just passed by the Louis Vuitton store inside Taipei 101 today.
The new version of its "monogram" or logo products was on show in the window. After the multicolored logos on white or black background, the cherries, and last spring's perforations, the latest invention is now ... a cartoon character.
The wallets and agendas on show - and something tells me the cartoon will not make on to full-size handbags and luggage - each have two stripes crossing the logos: one white, and one in another color, red, or orange, or yellow. And on those stripes, you can see the cartoon character I talked about: a young guy in a hotel porter's uniform. I imagine he is supposed to suggest 'travel' and 'holiday' in your mind. My first reaction was that he reminded me of one of the heroes of my youth: Belgium's Tintin, the intrepid journalist who went around the world to fight evil, save his Tibetan friend Chang, and so on.
My wife's reaction to the appearance of a cartoon on Louis Vuitton products was: are they really running out of imagination?
Looking at Louis Vuitton's French web site, I can't seem to find any references to the new style, and I don't know whose design it is. Maybe it's time to give that Taiwanese artist a chance who helped out the launch of Louis Vuitton's Taipei Maison a couple of months ago. Michael Lin - also known in Chinese as Lin Ming-hung - did a great job flashing Chinese designs on to one of Taipei's largest buildings, and maybe he should do the same with its bags. Give the old French lady a touch of Taiwan, a touch of Asian culture. If you did with modern Japan, why not Chinese culture?
Returning to Louis Vuitton's shop windows, the other side showed a piece of luggage with a more subtle logo, and with the slogan 'Voyagez, Voguez, Volez' which is French for something like 'Travel, Lounge, Fly.' Exactly what the reddish bag inspired me to do. So Louis Vuitton still stands for style after all. Forget all the annual innovations like cartoons and perforations, just give us good taste in modest doses.

It's a Carnival

Carnival is a household name with a long tradition on Taiwan's scene for men's clothing.
Unfortunately, that also means that the name stood for stodgy, conservative, unimaginative suits and shops which would draw yawns from most passersby, with the exception of stodgy, conservative, unimaginative businessmen maybe.
Until a couple of years ago, when Carnival was taken over by Yulon, Taiwan's biggest carmaker. Hold on! A car manufacturer making suits? I know what you're thinking, but the chief of Yulon is Kenneth Yen, regularly featured in magazines as one of Taiwan's most fashionable men, and a hardcore Giorgio Armani fan.
Yen took over distribution rights for Armani in Taiwan and is now giving Carnival a facelift as well. For the first time, the brand is recruiting local designers to give its suits more cachet. The "Carnival by Y L Kang" series of suits was designed by Kang Yen-ling, while an even better-known designer, Fang Kuo-chiang who goes by the name of Kieng and used to work for Emmanuel Ungaro, was asked to come up with accessories like belts and other leather goods that reflect Carnival's new logo, which incorporates a button. His designs go by the name of "Carnival by Kieng." While upgrading its products, Carnival is also trying to internationalize its image by opening a stand at a department store in Beijing later this month.

Not So Naturally

Naturally Jojo. You've seen the name, you've seen the overwhelmingly black T-shirts and other clothes from that brand just about on every busy street in Taipei. But which country is the brand from? The United States. At least, that's what the people at Naturally Jojo want you to believe. And they're lying.
That's what the Fair Trade Commission says. And they fined the company 350,000 New Taiwan dollars, that's more than 10,000 US dollars. Because the company is not based in New York at all, but right here, in Taiwan. The Taiwanese company known as the Kuei Ting International Fashion Clothing claimed on its Web site it first imported Naturally Jojo clothes from the U.S. in the early nineties, but not so, says the FTC.
Apparently, the company was just playing on the local attitude that foreign is better, and thus warrants higher prices, just like some shops claim they are selling the latest from Japan or Italy, but in fact, they just bought the whole lot in Taipei's Wufenpu area and was probably made in China in the first place. The fine should help rethink the adoration for everything foreign, and make labels own up that, yes, Made In Taiwan can mean quality too.