Larger Than Life

May 20, 2020 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Images: Photography: Szilveszter Makó/courtesy of Manish Arora

Arm Candy

May 20, 2020 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

As part of its spring online-only sale offerings, Christie’s Hong Kong launches its now-customary collaboration with Hermès, which this season features 190 lots. Under the theme “Power of Colour”, the expansive catalogue features handbags with an array of premium skins and finishings, appealing to a broad spectrum of collectors.

Those aficionados, much like experts in the field of haute horlogerie, are known for their encyclopaedic knowledge of materials, shades and models. To be an Hermèsian is to be fluent in a language in which phrases such as “Jaune Ambre Clemence K28” and “Matt Mykonos Alligator B30” represent something very specific, and in which the Hermès Himalaya Birkin is considered the Holy Grail. To such cognoscenti, there is no greater privilege than becoming the owner of a bag emblazoned with a horseshoe stamp, denoting that the bag was a special order.

Colour matters, too. The seasonal release of new product is always anxiously anticipated and results in comprehensive dissection by Hermèsians. Rumours of “rested” colours being re-released are regularly circulated. At auction, pinks and blues have tended to achieve the highest values. Shades such as Rose Azalee or Rose Sakura are known to command astronomical prizes, especially for small pieces such as the Kelly Pochette or the Kelly 25. Blue is also a highly coveted hue for Birkins.

All the Beautiful People

February 19, 2020 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Acclaimed Japanese designer Hidenori Kumakiri was a pattern-maker for Comme des Garçons Homme for six years before he stepped out on his own with Beautiful People in 2007. He followed this with a flagship store in 2011 and proclaimed he was creating “kids’ wear for adults” – with a children’s trench coat, leather riding jacket and other pieces aimed at grown-ups. After success in Japan, where the brand sells in more than 70 stores, Beautiful People began presenting at Paris Fashion Week in 2017. 

Every season, the designer finds beauty in the common ground between opposite ideas (such as kids/adults, male/female and front/back), all the while using exquisite fabrics and inventive garment construction. 

For his spring/summer 2020 collection in Paris, Kumakiri worked with the theme of “24” – 24 hours in the day, 24 looks in the collection, a colour palette that evolves through 24 gradients and even 24 ways to wear a piece. It played out like deconstruction meets reconstruction, creating a fluid, playful and reversible process in which the body has an endless dialogue with pieces that flip, twist and turn.

The designer took the 24-hours-in-a-day motif literally, showing sunrise and sunset prints, with fashions freeing and following the wearer from dusk until dawn on jersey dresses and pleated skirts. One dress came with three layers of mesh tulle with three holes, whose shape could be twisted asymmetrically by placing the body between one of the layers and one of the holes, adding further to the sense of transformation. 

Images: Beautiful People

Timeless Tuxedos and Signature Sharp Suits

February 5, 2020 / by Babette Radclyffe

Although creativity has liberated men’s formal dressing in recent seasons, when picturing the archetype of a suave gentleman, it’s hard not to picture Sean Connery as an immaculately attired James Bond accessorising a martini – shaken, not stirred – and sporting a sharp suit or a timeless tuxedo. Or Daniel Craig, who will step out in such sartorial snap on screens for the last time as the secret agent in No Time to Die this April.

Ian Fleming portrayed his 007 buying his signature suits on one of the most important streets in global fashion history: London’s Savile Row. The Row has not only been a bastion of bespoke tailoring for the past two centuries, but one of its oldest tailors, Henry Poole & Co, also played a leading role in the creation of the tuxedo. The most famous story about the emergence of the tux involves a wealthy tobacco magnate’s son from New York State’s Tuxedo Park, Pierre Lorillard IV. Inspired by a dinner jacket designed by Henry Poole for the Prince of Wales, he decided to do away with the traditional long tailcoat, wearing his new short jacket to the Tuxedo Club’s first annual ball in 1886. Lorillard kick-started a fashion revolution for men’s eveningwear and the tuxedo soon became a classic, bearing the name of the small village where it made its debut famous the world over. 

Savile Row continues to serve tasteful tailoring to discerning gentlemen. Housed at arguably the most prestigious address at No. 1, Gieves & Hawkes offers collections full of rich textures and sophisticated colour palettes, perfectly embodying the trend of understated luxury. Another Savile Row staple, Dege & Skinner, draws on its 150-year heritage to produce a range of traditional tuxedos as well as beautiful velvet smoking jackets, fit for any gentlemen’s club. 

Alexander McQueen also worked on Savile Row, notoriously sewing profanities into the lining of a jacket destined for Prince Charles, and the famed menswear brand that bears his name continues to offer quirky alternatives to classic evening-wear with items such as knotted skull cufflinks with crystal-eye details.

Images: courtesy of Philipp Plein; FP Journe; Dege & Skinner; Alexander McQueen; Santoni; Daniel Craig in Casino Royale ©2006 Danjaq, LLC and United Artists Corporation and Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc; Sean Connery in Dr No ©1962 Danjaq, LLC and United Artists Corporation;

Time Check

January 8, 2020 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

If you haven’t yet had the chance to head to Macau for the 11th edition of the Masters of Time exhibition at T Galleria by DFS (in collaboration with Shoppes at Four Seasons), worry not. There’s still time – it remains on until February – to appreciate the specially created collection that covers six time periods: the 19th century, the 1920s, the 1960s, the 2000s, “today” and “tomorrow”. 

Such chronological breadth reveals much in the way of technical mastery. The heights of craftsmanship feature in more than 120 exceptional and rare watches, along with fine-jewellery masterpieces from 25 prestigious brands (including Blancpain, Bulgari, Cartier, Franck Muller, Hublot, Jaquet Droz and Zenith), as well as compilations of exclusive, limited-edition and world-debut pieces. 

“This year marks another pinnacle of DFS’s collaborative efforts with the world’s leading brands in haute horlogerie,” says Matthew Green, DFS Group’s senior vice-president of watches and jewellery, noting that the offerings appeal to consumers of all ages and aspirations. “We are proud to showcase this peerless portfolio of timepieces and jewellery that promises to delight seasoned collectors and first-time buyers alike.” 

While the historical influences are profound, DFS concludes that “we are living in one of the golden ages of watchmaking, with well-established brands standing alongside new independents, offering an extensive array of models that provide something for virtually every taste”. 

Take the example of case materials, which range from traditional steel and gold to titanium and ceramic, and now to such exotic substances as Panerai’s Carbotech and IWC’s Ceratanium. There is also increased use of open-working by the likes of Girard Perregaux and Hublot, in addition to compilations now being combined more frequently, such as the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Chronograph GMT Automatic. There’s even a timepiece – the Panerai Luminor Tourbillon GMT – that contains 3D-printed material.

For timelords of the future, get ahead with the new Zenith Defy Inventor. Heralding its new disruptive Zenith Oscillator control system – which replaces the traditional sprung balance, used for more than three centuries – the oscillator dispenses with the 30 or so components traditionally used in a regulating watch, and features a case made of lightweight titanium and Zenith’s aluminium polymer composite Aeronith. 

Revisiting a Classic

January 8, 2020 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

The colour blue is everywhere around us: in the sky we look up to each morning and in the seas we travel across. It’s also the current buzzword of the beauty, wellness automotive and tech industries. Fitting, then, that to start the new decade, US trend-forecasting company Pantone has revealead its 2020 Color of the Year: Classic Blue, a hue it has described as being a “universal favourite”. (The 2019 selection was the “life-affirming” Living Coral, which was said to highlight the need for real-world experiences versus social media.) Pantone noted Classic Blue’s ability to instil calm and confidence, and its way of offering a dependable and stable foundation on which to build “as we cross the threshold into a new era”. 

“We are living in a time that requires trust and faith. It is this kind of constancy and confidence that is expressed by Pantone 19-4052 [Classic Blue],” remarks Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. “A boundless blue, evocative of the vast and infinite evening sky, Classic Blue encourages us to look beyond the obvious to expand our thinking – challenging us to think more deeply, increase our perspective and open the flow of our communication.”

Interestingly, blue is also not a colour associated with its traditional traits of sadness, despite centuries of artistic and literary minds using the hue to represent melancholy, including jazz music (such as Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue) and the genre of blues itself. “People don’t associate blue with sadness anymore,” says Eiseman. “I think that’s kind of an older-generation reaction.”

For 20 years, Pantone’s Color of the Year has influenced product development and purchasing decisions in numerous industries, including fashion, home furnishings, and industrial design, as well as product packaging and graphic design. Interestingly, its first-ever colour pick in 2000 was for Cerulean Blue. 

Pantone Color Institute analysts scour the globe looking for new colour influences from the worlds of entertainment, film, art and fashion, as well as popular travel destinations, design, new lifestyles and socio-economic conditions. Influences may also stem from new technologies, materials, textures and effects that impact colour, relevant social media platforms and even upcoming sporting events that capture worldwide attention. 

Classic Blue already maintains a strong, loyal following. The British Royal Family has always worn it; the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton and the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle both wore Classic Blue at separate engagements on November 7, 2019. Markle regularly wears Classic Blue dresses from Jason Wu and Roksanda Athena. Princess Diana wore the hue on numerous occasions, too. Kim Kardashian West has been recently spotted in the colour, while Lauren Hutton wore Armani in Classic Blue to the 2019 British Fashion Awards on December 2. 

Chill Vibes

November 27, 2019 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

The Margiela Myth

November 27, 2019 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Belgian designer Martin Margiela has been called the fashion world’s answer to British street artist Banksy, so elusive is his physical presence. The designer’s revolutionary creations have forever changed the face of fashion, yet he has remained almost anonymous. From the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp to becoming Jean-Paul Gaultier’s assistant, and from creative director at Hermès to leading his own brand, Margiela has never shown his face publicly – for more than 20 years and across 41 provocative collections. This sort of thing is almost unthinkable in the digital age of social media and Instagram. 

Thus, the premiere of Reiner Holzemer’s documentary film Martin Margiela in His Own Words last week in New York had the fashion cognoscenti delirious at the thought they might see 62-year-old Margiela on screen and even speaking. Alas, not. He appears, but only by way of his hands. However, for the first time, the “Banksy of fashion” reveals his drawings, notes and personal items, giving us an exclusive peek at his vision and career, via his hands and voice. 

Margiela tells us what led him to create his own company, Maison Martin Margiela, with Jenny Meirens as his business partner – and why he quit the fashion world entirely, in silence and without public announcement. He does it all with an incredibly unexpected humility, coming from a man of such fame (and notoriety). 

Mr Tiffany

November 13, 2019 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Fashion Sense

October 30, 2019 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

“Vain trifles as they seem, clothes… change our view of the world and the world’s view of us,” wrote Virginia Woolf in her 1928 book Orlando. Clothes remain our most basic visual communication tool, conveying our social and economic status, our ambition, our occupation and our self-worth.

If the 20th and 21st centuries feel increasingly like a Gatsbian journey into abundance and excess, nowhere is that humungous hubris more apparent than in the world’s fashion industry. Shoppers buy five times more clothing now than they did in 1980. In 2018, that averaged 68 garments per year, just over one per week. As a whole, global citizens acquire 80 billion apparel items annually. 

And if the global population swells to 8.5 billion by 2030, as is predicted, and if GDP per capita rises by 2% in developed nations and 4% in developing economies, economists estimate we will buy 63% more fashion – a rise from 62 million tons at present to 102 million tons. Boston Consulting Group claims that staggering amount is “equivalent to 500 billion T-shirts”. 

Of course, technology and its interaction with millennials and Generation Z was meant to represent the narrative to a more precise, less indulgent and wasteful world, but the “free return” policy of digitally purchased clothing that doesn’t fit on Net-a-Anything-and-Everything platforms has only poured fuel on the already rampant flames. 

The fashion industry devours a quarter of chemicals produced worldwide; the creation of just one T-shirt requires one-third of a pound of lab-concocted fertilisers and 25.3 kilowatts of electricity, and the World Wildlife Fund estimates it takes up to 2,700 litres of water to grow the cotton. Synthetic fabrics release microfibres into water when washed, both at mills and at home. As much as 40% enters rivers, lakes and oceans, where it is ingested by fish and molluscs – and in turn, by us. In 2017, Greenpeace even discovered microfibres in the waters of Antarctica. 

And if the pollution’s not enough, consider the waste. In the UK, 9,513 garments are dumped every five minutes; it’s the country’s fastest-growing waste stream. This clothing contains synthetics that aren’t biodegradable. Over the last 20 years, Americans have doubled the amount of clothes they throw away, from seven million to 14 million tons; that’s 80 pounds per person per year. The European Union disposes of 5.8 million tons of apparel and textiles each year. Worldwide, we toss 2.1 billion tons of fashion per annum. 

Here’s the biggest irony of all; in dressing ourselves and flattering our incessant vanity, we have stripped the planet bare and polluted its every artery, vein and capillary. We have, in short, dressed for our collective apocalypse. 

That’s largely the fault of fast fashion, writes Dana Thomas in her latest title, Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes, which she’s promoting at the Hong Kong Literary Festival (from November 1 to 10). It’s a follow-up to her previous bestseller, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster. Complicit in the rush of fast fashion’s grip has been ourselves – as unquestioning consumers. 

Writes Thomas in her introduction: “As I sit here and write this, I’m wearing a black cotton jersey dress with a white pointed collar and shirt cuffs, made in Bangladesh. I spotted it on a Facebook ad, clicked through, and within days it was delivered to my home. It is flattering and fashionably on point. But did I think hard about where it came from when I ordered it? Did I consider why it only set me back 30 bucks? Did I need this dress? No. No. And nope. I am not alone.”

What we should wear is one of the fundamental questions we ask ourselves every day. More than ever, we’re told it should be something new. Today, the clothing industry employs every sixth person on Earth, making it the most labour-intensive industry – more than agriculture or defence. Yet fewer than 2% of those workers earn a living wage. (Among the many sweatshop scandals over the years, in 2016, H&M, Next and Esprit were found to have Syrian refugee children sewing and hauling bundles of clothes at subcontracted workshops in Turkey.) 

Historically, the apparel trade has exploited labour, the environment and intellectual property – and in the last three decades, with the simultaneous unfurling of fast fashion, globalisation and the tech revolution, those abuses have multiplied exponentially, primarily out of view. We are in dire need of an entirely new human-scale model. 

But it’s not all gloom and doom, and Fashiongeddon isn’t upon us just yet. Thomas introduces the visionaries who are propelling the industry toward a more positive future by reclaiming traditional craft and launching cutting-edge sustainable technologies to produce better fashion. As a result, she sees a renewal in multiple developments, including 3D-printed clothes, clean denim processing, hyperlocalism in rural areas such as the American South, a return to manufacturing in New York and across Europe, and scientific breakthroughs to enable better fabric recycling and new lab-grown materials (“bio-couture”). She meets the A to Z of the ecosystem, from small-town makers and Silicon Valley whizzes to household names such as Stella McCartney, Levi’s and Rent the Runway. 

Images provided to China Daily

It’s Just Fashion, Old Sport

October 3, 2019 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Images: 2019 THOM BROWNE, INC