It’s one of the first major players in the Paris fashion industry to appoint creative directors from China. They both studied at la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne school. Liu previously worked with Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga and Stefano Pilati at Yves Saint Laurent in both womenswear and menswear. In 2005, she was awarded the Grand Prix du Trophees Saint Roch. Sun won the 2004 Grand prize in the Young Fashion Designer’s competition and the PFAFF Creative Prize. He started his career at Lolita Lempicka, and later worked at Balenciaga. He spent the previous five years working for John Galliano.

Next step for Cacharel, a Chinese-language website ?

VIVE’s experiment in selling premium “made-in-China” cosmetics was risky. So how has Shanghai VIVE been received since its official relaunch after 6 months existence ? Founder Demos Chiang, grandson of Chiang Kai-Shek, explains the strategy of the brand:

With its 1080 yuan (US$163) “Yurong cream” and 220 yuan ($33) “Xiren” soap, Shanghai VIVE is clearly positioning itself as a true luxury brand. Shanghai VIVE’s appeareance on the scene means that China’s lack of a home-grown luxury cosmetics brand has come to an end.

In its comeback campaign, Shanghai VIVE decided to continue to use the “Qipao calendar girl” image originally used in the “Two Sisters” days. Meanwhile, parent company Shanghai Jahwa hired DEM Inc. to create the new logo, product packaging and store design. The grandson of Chiang Kai-shek, DEM Inc. founder Demos Chiang has become a key part of Shanghai VIVE’s brand’s resurrection. This is not only because he’s a popular media figure and writer, but also because of the international perspective of his design team.

When preparing Shanghai VIVE’s design, Demos Chiang said he did a lot of research about 1930s Shanghai, while also studying popular fashion magazines at the time. Finally, Chiang settled on a black and rose-red motif for the brand, feeling it best depicted the mysterious and sexy nature of Shanghai women.

Despite the success of Liushen and Herborist, Shanghai Jahwa doesn’t want to follow their model with Shanghai VIVE. In contrast to Herborist, Shanghai VIVE doesn’t use herbal ingredients as a selling point. Rather, it uses culture as its main selling point.

Currently, all of Shanghai VIVE’s packaging is imported from France, as “no domestic suppliers meet our requirements,” according to Lei Yuanzong of the brand’s design center. Added Lei, “It’ll probably take 10 years for China to develop its own luxury capabilities.”

Nonetheless, Shanghai VIVE has begun to attract attention from Europe and the US, though the brand isn’t yet available overseas.

Source: Jing Daily

JOYCE announce a charity programme in aid of UNICEF, a collaboration with critically-acclaimed fashion label Rodarte, luxury brand SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS, and famous actress Maggie Cheung.

December 3 2009, a 5,160-square foot boutique, brimming with art and hosting a luxurious pre-fall collection will mark the opening of the new Chanel boutique in Shanghai. Placed in the Peninsula Hotel on the famous Bund river frontpromenade, and designed by architect Peter Marino, the Shanghai boutique promises an interior filled with the finest hand picked antiques, site-specific work from commissioned contemporary artists, and giant strands of glass beads, aimed at reflecting Coco Chanel’s original necklaces.

The salon-style boutique will be made up of rooms echoing the details of the founding designer’s famous Rue Cambon apartment, with rooms devoted to ready-to-wear, evening wear, accessories, shoes, fine jewellery and watches. Adding to the Shanghai delight will be an exclusive VIP room, and an ‘ultraluxe gallery’, featuring shoes and bags made by Chanel’s couture ateliers.

As if the in-store environment were not enough to impress, Lagerfeld will be showing his latest collection, themed ‘Paris-Shanghai’, accompanied by a short film also directed by the perfectionist designer.

Tokyo Kamon Girls

Tokyo Kamon Girls

Tokyo Kamon Girls

The cleansing oil line feature five different formulations…

The High Performance Cleansing Oil Classic is the original cleansing oil by Shu Uemura. The bottle is designed with leaves and vines and a Tokyo Kamon girl named Tsuruha.

The High Performance Balancing Cleansing Oil Enriched is for skin that is dry and dehydrated. The bottle is an eye catching orange check pattern and adorned with a Tokyo Kamon girl named Tamaki.

The High Performance Cleansing Oil Fresh is a light cleansing oil that will leave skin looking and feeling refreshed. The bottle is girly pink with chrysanthemums and a sweet Tokyo Kamon girl named Sakurako.

The Brightening Cleansing Oil will leave skin even-toned, translucent and smoother. The bottle is designed with purple and green colour with a coquettish Tokyo Kamon girl named Katsura.

The Limited Edition Cleansing Beauty Oil Premium A/O is a best seller. It’s has anti-aging and anti-oxidant properties to thoroughly cleans and purify the skin. The artwork on the bottle is of an elegant Tokyo Kamon girl named Matsuno on a green background with red pine trees.

Shu uemura Limited Edition Tokyo Kamon Girls Cleansing Oils are available from the Shu Uemura website while supplies last. / Shu Uemura

“I encourage everyone to take advantage of the golden opportunity to see this spectacular collection of modern art by world-renowned designers, architects and artists. At the same time, works from several local artists will also be on display,” he added.

Symbol of elegance and exquisite French lifestyle, Louis Vuitton has maintained close links with the arts for more than a century and a half. Founded during the industrial era, Louis Vuitton has always been in step with its time, working with the best engineers, decorators and creators. Inventor of the art of travel, the man Louis Vuitton and his successors have forged a strong relationship between traditional know how and present day design.

The arrival of Marc Jacobs and artistic director in 1997 reinforced and underlined the link with artists. Exemplary collaboration with Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami and Richard Prince has marked the history of the relationship between art and commerce. In Hong Kong, the Louis Vuitton and Art exhibition brings this exciting story to life, analysing the unique creative process through installations, where works of art and archive documents are brought together.

The Collection, a Choice
This exhibition of a selection of works from the Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création brings together a small number of significant large-scale works (paintings, photographs, video installations) by European, American and Chinese artists. These reflect an urban and energetic culture, leading to fictional landscapes, somewhere between dream and adventure.

Artists include: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paul Chan, Cao-Fei, Yang Fudong, Gilbert & George, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Andreas Gursky, Pierre Huyghe, Jeff Koons, Bertrand Lavier, Christian Marclay, Richard Prince.

Works by recognised and newly-discovered international artists working in the medium of video will be shown : Bas Jan Ader (Netherlands), Kader Attia, Cyprien Gaillard, Ange Leccia, Philippe Parreno (France), Olga Chernysheva (Russia), David Claerbout (Belgium), Trisha Donnelly, Ryan Trecartin (USA), Steve Mc Queen (Great Britain), Anri Sala (Albania), Zhou Tao (China), Rosemarie Trockel (Germany) among others.

In a developing open-minded spirit, the Foundation was eager to invite ‘emerging’ Hong Kong artists to take part in this exhibition with the help of a young art critic and curator who lives in China. / From Hong Kong Museum of Art

As China sets out to rebuild its artistic heritage, support is coming from an unexpected source: the global luxury industry. The big brands have targeted China – both for exhibition displays and for collaborations with contemporary artists.

When the new 8,000 square meter, or 87,000 square foot, contemporary art and design museum is constructed next to the iconic “bird’s nest” Olympic stadium, its contents might include a portrait of Christian Dior, created in incense ash by the artist Zhang Huan.

Or, alongside the wine bottles in iron by Zheng Guogu, there may be a similar contemporary copper work re-creating Dior fragrances.

Those two objects will go on display next week as “Christian Dior & Chinese Artists” opens in an industrial space in Beijing, developed as an interior Chinese garden and displaying a capsule fashion history focusing on the founder Christian Dior and the current designer John Galliano.

Over the last two decades, there have been numerous collaborations between art and fashion. But it seems that the Chinese cannot get enough of fashion as art – and of their own artists at the epicenter of high fashion.

Two exhibitions have shown the heritage of European fashion houses to the Chinese. In March, Ferragamo held its 80th birthday celebrations in Shanghai, with an exhibition of Salvatore Ferragamo at the Museum of Contemporary Art; and with a fashion show staged at the new Shanghai Port International Cruise Terminal.

“The ‘Evolving Legend’ exhibition was inaugurated in Shanghai to celebrate the anniversary and our 15 years relationship with China,” said Michele Norsa, CEO of Ferragamo. He says that after the exhibition of the Florentine shoemaker’s work moved on to Milan’s Triennale, where it closed last week, there are now plans to take the show elsewhere in  Asia.

Ferragamo established itself in Asia in the early 1970s and its first Chinese art collaborations go back to 1992, when an exhibition of 11 Chinese artists in different disciplines was held in its New York store, along with a sponsorship of a Chinese video art and photography exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York.

MaxMara, another Italian design house, opened its traveling exhibition “Coats” last month at the Namoc Museum in Beijing with a fashion show and a dinner at the Tai Miao temple that was attended by internationally known Chinese celebrities. They included the actress Maggie Cheung, famous for the movie “In the Mood for Love,” and Guo Jingjing, a gold-medal-winning diver at the Beijing Olympics.

Louis Vuitton, whose roots in China go back to 1979, has seen its artistic collaborations flower. As well as sponsoring a Sovereign Asia Art Prize in 2007, Vuitton brought art this year to its two Hong Kong stores, with Zhan Wang creating a steel sculpture in the Central district, and the shop in the Tsim Sha Tsui area across Victoria Harbor displaying work from the famous Chinese actor and photographer Chow Yun Fat.

Earlier this year, Vuitton held in its Champs-Elysées flagship store in Paris an exhibition inspired by André Citroën’s epic journey down the “Silk Road” in 1931, including Chinese video artists and photographers.

For next week’s exhibition, Sidney Toledano, CEO of Dior, was determined to do more than sponsor an art show.

“It’s not about branding and marketing – it is about having a cultural impact,” Toledano says. “We could just have supported the artists, but the idea was to let them work a Dior theme, to see how they looked at Monsieur Dior himself and the Dior universe. When I saw the finished works, done over three months, I was impressed by their creativity. It was almost like watching a couture collection develop.”

The 21 artists whose works go on display from Nov. 16 at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing include some of China’s edgiest artists. Their work, as seen currently at the new Charles Saatchi Gallery in London, might raise a few eyebrows in a dialogue between art and fashion.

Zhang Huan’s personal and politicized sculptures and ash paintings will face off with the personage of Christian Dior; while Li Songsong is exchanging three paintings – of Boccaccio’s “The Decameron,” of the National People’s Congress and of the crumpled wings of a fallen airplane – for the ultimate fashion statement: a giant Lady Dior bag in neon lights.

It seems unlikely that Liu Wei’s sculpture of a turd will be redeveloped for Dior. But the hollow, robotic eyes of Zhang Xiaogang’s paintings will be viewed in a vision of Dior Homme, designed by Kris Van Assche; and Liu Wei’s extraordinary effects with dog chewings will be applied to Dior’s “Cocotte” dress.

Pearl Lam, the director of the Contrasts Gallery of Chinese contemporary art which opened in Hong Kong in 1992 and later in Shanghai and Beijing, says that the line between art and commerce has never been drawn in China, because traditionally “artists” and their work were not defined. Known as “literati,” they might paint, write calligraphy, compose poetry, literature and music, while at the same time designing with craftsmen anything from teapots to houses.

“In ancient times in China, art was not created for selling – only for self-cultivation,” says Lam, explaining that the artworks were given away to those who had been appreciative and the literati’s highest standing was to be qualified to join the imperial court.

Cut to the 21st century, and commercialism and consumerism have inevitably entered the equation, with the catalyst in the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami and his collaborations with Louis Vuitton.

“When a Chinese artist, like Zhang Huan, accepts a commission from Dior to create works about Dior, he is in fact pushing the boundaries to react to the Chinese traditional values of art and to question: what is art in the context of China’s 21st century,” says Lam, who claims that all artists understand the power of marketing by fashion houses and know that through fashion exposure, the artist’s name might become a brand.

It might sound like a collaboration between two hungry groups – the Chinese dignitaries, eager to find the home-grown art to fill a new architectural wonder; and Western brands trying to create a name and good will in China. But if commerce encourages art, whatever the motive, it seems a positive step. And with the Chinese, even in tough economic times, acting as suppliers of products to the world, is it surprising that the country’s art has become a marketable commodity?

By Suzy Menkes, International Herald Tribune

Graduated from Shanghai’s Donghua University and studied in Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, his particular background has allowed him to use a mixed idea of combining both Eastern and Western culture or elements in his work. His philosophy is to balance the contradictiory elements and try to make them cooperate with each other by western techniques for tailoring and the way of Deconstructionism. Though he is only 33 years old, his age is not an obstacle for his design, which is definitely not immature or tawdry, but connotational and expert.

His outstanding performance in the past has already won him strong support form some global groups like Lycra, Tencel, L’Oreal and Itouch and held his own catwalk shows in the cities such as Osaka, Taipei, Hongkong and Shanghai. With high remarks from renown professional media as Vogue, Elle, in Oct.2005, he was chosen as feature designer by Vogue China launch issue. In 2006, with the support of the british Fashion Council, Wang Wei have been involved in “London Fusion” fashion showcase along the Bund in Shanghai which was organized by the Mayor of London to feature leading fashion designers from London and China.

He’s now running his own lable and his personal studio,Wang Wei Gallery, set up London in 2006. After his show in Shanghai Fashion week in 2005, his work caught attention of Three British Fashion Council members incuding Vivien Westwood. Soon he has received the invitation for London Fashion Week 2006. The launch of his debut showcase at London Fashion Week in February was an instant success, which was followed by abundant good feedbacks from not only the professionals, the media, but the buyers as well. Thanks to his endowment in the field of design and his strong perception of aesthetics, some of the most fastidious British buyers are feeling inclined to his garments.

With his new collection, he made himself again the highlight of the exhibition. “Shade of Color”, is the inspiration, or the pivot of the season. The color scheme of this season is used to interpret “light in space”, with a focus on intense whites, light grays and complementary darker shades. To achieve such effect of light and color, the designer insisted using high-quality material from Japan . 100% cotton and silk, the two simple but pure fabrics, help him to deliver his thoughts in a rather implicit way, which closely accord to the essence of oriental culture.

Also to read:
Interview with WANG Wei /by shmag
UK style: East meets West /by Chicago Fashionista

A round-eyed robot featuring cameras head sits on the dashboard and warns if the driver is getting sleepy. This highly innovative Robotic Agent talks to you in Japanese and English so that you are never alone on the move.

Let it drives you to the world of japanese manga. /by Bornrich