Taipei Fashion House

Next Tuesday, Taipei's rather downmarket district of Wanhua will be enriched with a new museum: the Taipei House of Clothing Culture, or whatever official name the city will come up with.
The baroque house, which spent many years as an empty shell in the Dali neighborhood, is not so much a museum as an art and exhibition space, which will be rented out for fashion shows, lectures, art performances and the like.
Opening day, October 24, will feature a virtual fitting room, a 100 years of history of Taiwan's fashion, and in the evening a public fashion show which includes Italian brand Missoni.
If all that sounds rather abstract, it is because so far I have found only limited reports about the place and the event in the local press.
I won't be there on opening day, but I guess it'll be worthwhile to visit one of the weekends after. Will this place be a focus for fashionistas with an emphasis on local designer culture, or will it turn into just another performance hall? I'll have to go and check it out for myself. To be continued, with more practical information about how to reach this place.

No Nudes

For those of you about to run out to the Breeze Center for your Marc Jacobs T-shirt, I can tell you, stay home! They're sold out!
This is the second time I write you this story, because through some marvel of technology, I couldn't post the first version on the blog, and it got completely lost. Thank you, blogger, for wasting my time.
On Sunday morning, I was waiting outside the Breeze Center before opening time with another half a dozen people. As soon as the doors opened, we all ran in, and about half of us went straight downstairs because that's where the Marc by Marc Jacobs boutique is.
But guess what? Some others had been smarter and found another entrance to the mall, so there was already a line from the store past two adjacent shops. We all got handed a red ticket with a number, mine was 250-something, so you can already guess what happened with the 80 T-shirts on offer.
Exactly, they were sold out before I even entered the shop. As consolation prize, people received a small box of facial cream, which my wife was happy with, at least. But my dreams of Naomi Campbell in orange, Winona Ryder in pink, and Hilary Swank in white vanished into history.
I guess I should've known. Here in Taiwan, even seemingly uninterested things attract the masses to line up if the marketing is done right.
I want to apologize to you if reading my blog caused any of you to hurry to the Breeze Center and waste your time. The next time I'll have to put up a disclaimer of some sort.

No Nudes

Nude Design : Correction

Hold on, Marc Jacobs fans!
Did I mention this coming Sunday as the day to buy your T-shirts with nude stars at the 'Marc by Marc Jacobs' inside the Breeze Center?
Wrong!
The first day is Sunday October 15, so you still have to wait more than a week, until after the Mid-Autumn and Double Ten holiday, before you can buy your copies of the shirts.
And so will I. I have more or less made up my mind to buy three of them. At least the Naomi Campbell, and then two other ones, possibly Hilary Swank and Winona Ryder, at least if they are available in Taipei.
I won't be wearing them, at least not on the MRT, but I'll keep them in a safe, dry place, a bit like a stamp collector keeps a rare 1863 stamp from the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Nude Design

Marc Jacobs is the man who turned the handbag into a must-have for thousands, no, millions of Asian women. And now, he is turning his attention to T-shirts. For some reason though, I think he's not going to be so successful at it.
Jacobs has two brands of his own: 'Marc Jacobs,' which you can find in the alley running south along the Grand Formosa Regent in Taipei for example, and 'Marc by Marc Jacobs,' which now has a store on the first floor at the Breeze Center.
And it's at the Breeze place you have to be this coming Sunday if you want to fork out 1,000 NT dollars (about 32 US$) for Marc's latest creations. The T-shirts have texts like 'Protect Your Largest Organ' printed over the picture of a famous person. The persons available include Naomi Campbell, Winona Ryder, and Marc Jacobs himself.
Oh yes, and why do I think they're not going to sell as well as Marc's LV bags? The stars posed nude. A frontal nude on the front, a rear view on the back of the T-shirt, with the naughty bits not really showing, of course. As usual with nude pictures, it's all for a good cause, in this case skin cancer research at a New York university. One word of warning: only 8 out of the 12 original versions will be available in Taipei.
I can't see young Taiwanese women walking along Chunghsiao East Road or sitting on the MRT showing off a nude picture of Marc Jacobs, but I'd certainly want a Naomi Campbell one as a collector's item. Please.