Focus on fashion in Shanghai
Last September, Hong Kong designer Flora Cheong-Leen gave an interview to a Shanghai magazine called iSh. There were two notable facts about the piece: one was that she was referred to throughout as Tian Ai, the name she evidently prefers to use in the mainland; the other was her response to a question about why she had chosen that particular moment to open in Shanghai.
Her reply was pointed: 'Oh well, it's all over in Hong Kong, there's no recovery.' Last weekend, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (TDC) brought Hong Kong Expo 99 to Shanghai in order to promote Hong Kong brands on the mainland. There were a four-day trade exhibition at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre and a retail promotion at the Number One Department Store, which will continue until March 28.
There were also a number of fashion events at the Shanghai Grand Theatre in the Opera House; these were originally billed as fashion shows but the municipal authorities disliked the idea of lowering the cultural tone of their splendid new building so, after hurried consultations, the word 'fashion' was removed from all references to these happenings. The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra was also wheeled out before every show to add necessary gravitas.
Cheong-Leen was one of the designers whose works were on parade although, as she has now moved her operation to Shanghai, it is debatable whether she still qualifies as a Hong Kong label. Of her remark that 'it's all over in Hong Kong', she now says: 'It's over for me in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a place where we didn't have local support from buyers. People with money buy Western labels, people without buy copies. I was fighting to stay there but it costs $8,000 a month for salesgirls in Hong Kong. In Shanghai it costs 800 yuan [HK$750] a month.' She puts her finger on a crucial issue. William Chan, whose Menage a Toi label was part of the TDC's promotion, has no shops in the mainland and is frank about his prospects.
'Be realistic, darling,' he says, with a despairing roll of the eyes. 'I can't do things I like in Shanghai, I'd have to compromise. I went into a shop run by Shanghai designers and they had beautiful clothes for 200 yuan. My T-shirts would cost 500 yuan. How could I put my clothes on sale here at such a different price?' So why did he come? 'The TDC asked me and I thought I'd love to see what's happening in Shanghai, it's my first time here. But I'll tell you something scandalous: the people here don't really like Hong Kong designers. They love to go to Hong Kong but they don't want Hong Kong to come to Shanghai.' In some ways, this is understandable.
Ten years ago, Shanghai was the poor, shabby relative standing in the shadow of a glitzy southern cousin with colonial trimmings; now, in the era of MTV, the Internet (occasional prosecutions and threatened crackdowns notwithstanding) and an explosion of fashion magazines, it can generate its own shiny images.
'Everyone is talking about fashion and style in China now,' says Pacino Wan, who also accompanied the TDC to Shanghai.
Wan opened a shop within Shanghai's Isetan department store five months ago, but he finds Beijing, where he has two shops, an easier market, and Guangzhou, where he has four outlets, easiest of all because it is within range of Hong Kong's television stations.
'Shanghai fashion is too mass-market. They'll pay 60 yuan for a shirt but they won't buy imported items. You know what the Shanghainese call Dickson Poon's store here? A fashion museum. People go to look but they don't buy.' Judging by the numbers who flocked to the Shanghai Exhibition Centre, an interest in Hong Kong goods certainly exists. Last time the TDC mounted a similar expo in Shanghai, crowd control at the fashion shows (as they were then called) broke down and police halted proceedings.
In an effort to control matters this year, the TDC strictly regulated the availability of tickets - so much so that desperate touts outside the Opera House could be seen waving 100-yuan notes at anyone clutching an entry pass.
While such scenes are gratifying, in theory, there was an indiscriminate air about what exactly people had come to see; a scrum broke out at the TDC stall, for instance, when staff simply began handing out information in paper bags. But Michael Sze, the TDC's executive director, believes attracting so many locals can only be good for Hong Kong's long-term standing. 'This is our first integrated promotion involving image,' he says. 'To be honest, the main fashion show yesterday [which featured the Hong Kong designers' works] was focused on image while the product promotion in the department store is focused on brand names.' Those brand names included such old reliables as Kwun Kee Tailors, Ascot Chang, Italina Imitation Jewellery and Nin Jiom Medicines, as well as such helpfully auspicious companies as Common Goal and Good Decision. A common economic goal is certainly what every exhibitor in Shanghai had in mind, but whether the TDC's $9 million expenditure was a good decision is anyone's guess.
Uncertainty about the yuan, the popularity of Korean cheap clothing and the general vagaries of business life in Shanghai (perhaps it's worth observing here that iSh magazine has been obliged to operate under three names in the past six months) have made designers based in Hong Kong understandably cautious. And there is another enormous market everyone wants to crack.
'I'm going to Australia in May with the TDC for Sydney Fashion Week,' says Chan. 'The American buyers go there. Why do they go to Sydney and not Hong Kong? I don't know and I don't care. But the market I really want to explore is in America. That's where we can make an impression.'
