THE headquarters of the Toppy Group is in Kwai Chung, not the most prestigious address for a fashion company. But as this is also where the container terminals are, full of slotted seams of cargo waiting to be profitably distributed across the world, it is perhaps as good an image as any of the group's success. For Toppy is that rare beast, a Hong Kong clothing company which has become an international success. As the company responsible for Episode, Excursion, Jessica and Colour 18, its products can be bought on three continents. It has high gloss value. Supermodels Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista have advertised its wares and, as the world knows, they don't get out of bed for less than US$10,000 (HK$77,300) a day.
There are two major Toppy advertisements running at the moment. In one of them Isabella Rossellini muses on her clothes from Episode. Her thoughts are written across the pictures: 'Intelligent clothes are the ones you don't have to think about' and 'I don't wear bright things. I'm bright enough'. The second is actually part of the American Express campaign but features Jeffrey Fang, Toppy's founder and chief executive officer. The strapline says: 'For inspiration, you don't look at fashion shows, you look at people'.
Rossellini is presumably used to fame. Fang, however, is not. One of the most surprising things about Toppy is not its success but the exceptionally low-key way in which the company is run. Interviews are nearly always turned down, this one was finally given the go-ahead when it was explained that the piece would be about the company, not the people behind it. Those critics who say that the clothes in Episode all look the same might find such refusal to emphasise the individual of particular significance. But those who applaud the way in which Toppy is scaling the notoriously treacherous canyons of the rag trade see such purist dedication as part of an ever upward path.
It is more than 20 years since Fang decided to open a factory outlet in Causeway Bay but, at 48, he still has the lean, casually dressed and bespectacled look of a restless student. You could imagine him helping Bill Gates out with a Microsoft problem or two, an impression reinforced by his pronounced American accent which is a result of studying engineering in Wisconsin. 'At that time in Chinese families, you studied science, you didn't do arts,' he says. 'But I never spent one day as an engineer.' That was because he went straight into the family's textile business. His father had been a cotton trader in Shanghai but had switched to production, particularly knitwear, when he came to Hong Kong in 1949. Jeffrey, the youngest son, was fascinated by the retail end of the business and in 1973 he launched into it with his brother, Vincent. 'It was humble beginnings; it was intended to be humble. It was a weekend thing. We bought the name Toppy. We were thinking about changing it but as we were selling tops anyway, it was fine then. We thought later it might sound too junior for us but ... well, it's OK.' Business was good but not spectacular; the rise of Toppy was a slow spin which may explain how it has sustained its momentum. Jessica, the company's young, trendy label, was set up in 1978, but it was another eight years before the real expansion started. Fang and his wife Christine wanted to pursue retail options in a more aggressive manner. 'The chance came to take over a chain of 16 stores in America. That was in 1986 and Jessica was doing well in Hong Kong. So we took it over. And it totally failed.
The size wasn't right, the taste was too novel for American markets.' And so, out of what could have been a commercial disaster, was born Episode. The name evolved in a taxi ride up New York's 6th Avenue. 'We looked at our life as an episode, changing from manufacturing to retail. And at that time Dynasty and Dallas were popular and, you know, they were in episodes. And then the shops have different windows every week, the stores change and that's an episode.' The label - more conservative, more elegant and more expensive than Jessica - was launched simultaneously in Hong Kong and the US. The Fangs had worked closely with Liz Claiborne, for whom they had been sole sweater manufacturer, and were influenced by that company's style. 'We had a chance to see how a line is put together, to learn about prototypes, researching fabrics, the pressures of getting it done,' Fang remembers. 'We were fascinated by it. So Episode just didn't fall from the sky.' Oddly enough, given that the impetus had been in response to a bad American experience, Episode took off more quickly in Hong Kong than in the US. For female expats here, it seemed heaven-sent; a store which catered for larger women with Western tastes. And it deliberately targeted those locals who had travelled outside Hong Kong and had been influenced by European designers. The look was, and is, affordable Armani.
In America, however, it took longer to get established. The store space the Fangs had inherited was smaller and in the wrong locations; they moved progressively north, away from the sun belt and up to the cities where metropolitan women needed career clothes. In Britain, they aimed themselves at the considerable gap which existed between Marks & Spencer and designer labels. They were helped by their British business partners, Susan and Peter Woolf, who identified this void, established the name and then, when the joint venture split up, launched a chain of stores called Susan Woolf on some Episode sites. The Episode outlets have tended to move into department stores but there are still free-standing stores in Britain and, ironically, the company is about to take over the Susan Woolf shops in Glasgow and Manchester.