You are now entering the comfort zone

GOODBYE to thick-cut orange marmalade and Laura Ashley prints as the exemplars of quality British export design. The Britain of the 90s is different. Mrs Thatcher is gone, and the stolid thinking of her leadership and the lifestyle she epitomised has gone with her. Britons are thinking lighter, leaner and with much more definable sense of collective contemporary taste and, as a result the nation's designers are back where they belong - at the creative cutting edge of interior, industrial and graphic design. And the world, including Asia, is taking fresh notice. Cult figures such as architect Sir Norman Foster, famous for his Hongkong and Shanghai Bank headquarters and fashion designers Paul Smith and Vivienne Westword have become international names, with good reason. Their work is witty and combines the hundreds of elements required of 90s living. The quality must be good. It must work properly, preferably fold up, and be adjustable and demountable. It also must look good, be understated and manage an iconoclastic impact. The result has been an explosion in variety and quality of British design, which is producing one modern classic after another in anything from free-form furniture to the Lotus Virage sports car, the John Bloor Triumph motorcycle and the little miracles of Marks & Spencer's pre-prepared food. This culture of the new purity, which really took root in the 80s, is a classic illustration of success breeding success. Paul Smith and Vivienne Westwood are known from Japan to Australia to Sao Paulo to New York. And their reputations have breathed commercial life into the next generation of fashion artists such as Betty Jackson and Georgina von Etzdorf. And they, in turn are taking British design in new directions. The younger artists, and their copycat fans have produced a gentler, kinder approach to dressing, and living. Clothes have become even more liberated from the confines of gender. They must make us feel good as the cling and cuddle the body - for both men and women - but always with a touch of wit or eccentricity. The comfort zone also has been extended to interior, industrial and graphic design. Good 90s design is matte-finished, low-key, sophisticated but exciting. Design barriers must be crashed through or design will crash. To this end Lotus Engineering stood the cycling world on its head when British cyclist Chris Boardman won a gold medal on the new LotusSport bicycle in Barcelona and jockeys around the world just love Paul Priestman's jockey's visor. Next week, Hong Kong will be able to make up its own mind about the merits of the British is best claims, when the Best of British Design Roadshow comes to town. The four-day event, which will be opened by the British Trade and Industry Minister, Mr Richard Needham, on Friday, will highlight all that is best in food, furniture, fashion and debate. There will be the Best of British Cars at Pacific Place, the Best of British Fare at Harbour Place, at the Convention Centre, the Best of British Design, and in the Convention Centre's main hall, a Best of British Design seminar. Britain's Design Museum curatorial director, Dr Paul Thompson, will be in town to choreograph the exhibition and the seminar, where designer Richard Powell will talk about his company's latest success, the Nexus motorised cycle, and Paris correspondent of the Financial Times, Alice Rawsthorn, will point us to the designs the future. There will be Paul Smith and Vivienne Westwood clothes on show along with the GEC-Marconi videophone, the Triumph Motorcycle, Verticale Loudspeakers, and small but important innovations like the silver stubber (for smoker) used in the London underground system and the Trax seating system used at the Macau Ferry Terminal. People can gaze at - but not flop into - the new classic - the Jasper Morrison sofa, or the theatrical Branson Coates armchair. Exhibition organisers are expecting racing-mad Hong Kong to be especially interested in the Paul Priestman-designed Jockey's Visor. Now that all-weather racing is commonplace internationally, jockeys have struggled with a perennial problem - the quantities of dirt, sand and grit that gets kicked into their faces during races. To overcome the problem, a jockey usually wears three pairs of goggles at the same time. As one pair becomes heavily smattered with mud, jockeys pull them down around their necks and pull up a protective scarf over their noses and mouths. THE Priestman visor, which is now being marketed in Britain, uses several sheets of pre-rolled transparent film, to allow jockeys to keep the goggles clean. As one layer if film becomes dirty, the rider pulls a tab which removes the dirty surfaces and replaces it with a fresh surface of film. Another invention expected to attract the phone-mad residents of the territory is the Relate 2000, the video-telephone developed by GEC-Marconi and launched in April this year, for customers of the communications company, BT. There are some who may dread such an invention that allows callers to see and hear the people at the other end of the line. But it is accepted that the videophone is the single most significant development in the telephone this century as the new GEC-Marconi product has overcome the problem that has held back the videophone's development. Until now, the videophone had to rely on dedicated lines to transmit calls and vision. The new Relate 2000, however, can use a normal voice line to transmit its messages. Best of British Design Exhibition, Convention and Exhibition Centre, October 22, 12.30pm-5.45pm; October 23-25, 11am-7pm