Leading monthly publication Numéro offers an avant-garde view of the worlds of fashion, art and luxury. Featuring both today’s icons and tomorrow’s master talents, the magazine explores the convergence of contemporary culture, from fashion to architecture, via art, beauty, cinema, music and design.

The Chinese edition of the magazine launched an event in Plaza 66, one of the top luxury mall in Shanghai. 13 celebrities such as fashion creators Giorgio Armani, Karl Lagerfeld, Jean-Paul Gauthier. During 15 minutes, they are sharing views on fashion, style and their own life achievements, hopes and fears.

The british fashion house Burberry and the French couture Louis Vuitton were dueling in a creative fight. It was already impressive to experience the new website fashionshow.louisvuitton.com, we again experienced a new storytelling writing of the Burberry fashion show in Beijing this April 13, created by its art-director Christopher Bailey.

Beijing and last Burberry 1,000 sqm boutique were chosen to represent the various technologies breakthrough. In a 2,000 sqm the audiences could see holographic models associated with real ones on the stage. Many other choregraphies and live shows, such as british rock-pop band Keane, DJ Tom Guiness and Chinese DJ ShanXi. An impressive broadcast made the show available in 200 other partners websites and many small cinemas prepared for the occasion at some Burberry boutiques.

Let’s see what Louis Vuitton is preparing back…

Stars and spokepersons opened the first exhibition of Chanel in Shanghai, at MoCA. Curated by Jean-Louis Froment, a well-known figure in the contemporary art and design worlds, the new exhibition highlights the creative dimensions of the House of Chanel throughout history. Culture Chanel is going back to the house roots and shows how it transformed across the differentes eras of the 20th century, while also showing its impact on our modern societies in Europe, Americas and Asia.

The exhibition interprets Mademoiselle Chanel’s universe through her designs, her iconic pieces and her literary and artistic inspirations. Delving into her brushes with poets Jean Cocteau and Pierre Reverdy, painters Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali and composer Igor Stravinsky, ‘Culture Chanel’ has been developed around five themes: Origin, Abstraction, Invisibility, Liberty and Imaginary.

Dressed by Chanel house, Anna Mougialis and Chinese artist Zhou Yi met each other and introduced the exhibition.

A must see for fashionistas and design fans alike.

Culture Chanel — From January 15th to March 14th 2011, The Museum of Contemporary Art, 231 Nanjing Road (West), Huangpu, Shanghai, China

Shanghai Tang’s chief executive shares his wisdom on the Financial Times, delivering some interesting messages to the young entrepreneurs or school students. We read that Richemont put him in charge of one of its smaller investment, the Hong Kong-based Shanghai Tang.

He progressively became the “mandarin de luxe” by transforming his key ideas into action, from the original concept of Shanghai tailoring to the concept of a more open lifestyle brand. His few advises to the coming graduates of business schools are to learn “the real experience of human relationships” or to “how to handle different issues”, things that are rarely taught in school, and to accept the “conflict between designers and salespeople, who sometimes accuse the designers of being too selfish and not commercial enough”.

Read more: “Le mandarin de luxe: Shanghai Tang’s chief executive shares his wisdom” at the Financial Times’ website.

“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

WUYONG Cover

Make useless things into useful, statement of anti-fashion shown on the last day of Haute Couture week, Chinese designer MA Ke staged on again in the green gardens of Palais Royal with her paradoxical concepts.

Theme: “Luxurious Qing Pin 奢侈的清贫”, which explains an immaterial statement of ancestral spirit.

Scene: One alley of the city’s Palais Royal gardens transformed into a fashion production chain straight out of rural China. The line went from boxes of cotton seed, to weavers and dyers, with people actually spinning and working looms, and on and on until the final product, modeled by a group “dancers” more like choreographic performance than a fashion show before departing in a single file.

Soundtrack: a wailing voice accompanied with water flow from time to time for half an hour from NA Ren, a Mongolian singner as well as the role of dyer on the scene.

Top models: from youth to grizzled middle aged, no frontier men and women.

The result, homespun loose fitting trousers, gathered skirts and big shirts, made up of naturally dyed and hand-woven pieces resembling functional earth tone garb worn by Chinese peasants, worked as a moment of far-flung fashion poetry.

To cloture the Paris Haute Couture week, MA Ke and her under-design “WUYONG” are obviously contrary to the rest of lavish and extravagance runways.

Buoyed by the success of her “Exception de Mixmind” label, which is sold in around 50 boutiques across China, she has launched her couture line, from 2006, “Wuyong” (which means “useless” in Chinese.) with her first exhibition last year on the Paris fashion week.

Luxury maisons, Modern Art, Asia become the new area of luxury marketing. Chanel’s HK Mobile Art, LV’s japanese multicolor looking, and now Hermès scarves exposition in Beijing from March 25 to April 16 2008. Who else?

Actually, “The Tale of Silk” Hermès’ Scarves Exhibition has just been launched at the Shanghai Art Museum last year in September. Step by Beijing in 2008 is not a coincidence.

The show marks the 70th anniversary of its first scarf and the 10th anniversary of the renowned brand entering the Chinese market. The exhibition comprised 21 section displaying 46 pieces of scarves selected from 1500 styles designed by Hermes in the past 70 years.

Besides, specially designed scarves coming from skilled Chinese artists were also showcased during the event.

Hermès specially invited Mr. Hilton McConnico to design the exquisite and fine scarves show. Stylist, designer, photographer, filmmaker and screen writer, this American artist living in Paris is keen on telling stories with colors, especially about silk. This time he will create a dialogue between the audience and Hermès scarves, with the participation of the Chinese artist Ding Yi, the film director Li Yu and the dancer and choreographer Huang Doudou.

The monthlong Exhibition will present 19 series of exhibits from scarf artists from all over the world. Installed with multi-support, danse, paint, video…, mise-en-scene with lanterns or clothes to give a peculiar eastern touch, the program will take the audience to an abundant visual experience and the pure spirit of the Hermès silk art.

Beijing Today’s Art Museum: Building 4, 32 Baiziwan Rd, Chaoyang district. From March 25 to April 16 2008, everyday from 10 a.m. to 17 p.m.

An UFO landed on the roof of Star Ferry Car park nearby Hongkong bay, 27th Feb (till 5th April). It is in this futuristic, shiny, white, curved pavilion that Chanel launched its first stop of modern art exhibition called ‘Mobile Art’.

The strange futuristic pavilion as itself an artwork is created by British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid. Made of 300 blocks of FRP (Fiber Reinforced Plastics) and assembled in 4 weeks, the exhibition venue becomes the pearl shining in HongKong Central skyline. When night comes, it is covered in neon blue.

The modern art exhibition consists of artistic interpretations of the iconic Chanel handbag. Visitors are encouraged to wear headphones to listen to music by Jeanne Moreau specifically designed in mandarin and cantonese to voyage in « ce film en 3D, ce paysage qui bouge » (a real landscape and a 3-dimensional film which comes to life) promised by Fabrice Bousteau, Mobile Art Exhibition curator.

The exhibit features works by 20 international artists from China, France, South Korea, Iran, Belgium, Russia and the United States among other countries. A giant sculpture of a black Chanel handbag that encases a video, by Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury; two stuffed pigs next to encased Chanel handbags called “Jesus Love and 2 Handbags”, by Belgian artist Wim Delyoye. Japanese artist Tabaimo designed a black hole with graphic animation. It’s her interpretation of unlocking the secrets hidden inside a handbag. We can also find the creations of french artists Daniel Buren “Untitled 2008″ and Sophie Calle, the shanghainese filmmaker Yang Fudong. A black poetic room under Paris touch by Argentine artist Leandro Erlich; a bouquet of flowers in mosaic by Taiwanese artist Michael Linn with the crystal clouds by Italien artist Loris Cecchini; gag videos of Russian Blue Noses and bondage photos of Araki with chaines of Chanel handbag.

Bousteau says the exhibit is intended to be experimental and to move art away from the more traditional museum setting. “Mobile Art in my view is an expression of utopia and the future. It’s a completely weird architectural project because it’s the first building in the world which will travel, which will circulate and which is nomadic.”

The exhibition will travel through Asia, the U.S., London, Moscow and arrive in Paris in 2010. The next stop after Hong Kong is Tokyo.

“From a Shanghai-based artist Chen Hangfeng:

I just love Nike, the shoes, the shirts, the hats. There is not a piece of clothing I own that doesn’t bear the Nike logo. One morning I realized that even my shit was shaped like a Nike Logo. I wonder, is there something wrong with my stomach or my mind.
No turds were harmed in the creation of this poster. Poo made from plastic putty and oil paint. Isn’t it luxurious?!)”