OPINION: A capital idea to promote local fashion

BEIJING, Jun 10, 2011 (The Straits Times - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- In Beijing, the hallowed halls of the National Museum located across from Tiananmen Square are currently the repository of old leather handbags and canvas trunks. But they are not just ordinary baggage. Instead, as part of the Louis Vuitton Voyages exhibition, they are historic pieces dating back to the 1860s.


While the museum defends the exhibition as one to "inspire the domestic cultural design industry", critics are calling it "beneath the museum's dignity".



The exhibition comes at an interesting time, when the world's best-known brands, largely from the West, are looking to expand into Asia and, in particular, China. Mainland China is the fastest-growing market for luxury goods this year, with sales rising 25 per cent to 11.5 billion euros, according to consulting company Bain & Co. According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, China will be the world's top buyer of luxury products by 2015.


Louis Vuitton is not the only large fashion house making its mark in Asia. On June 24, Italian fashion house Prada will make its debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Prada, which previously shunned IPOs, will be the first Italian company to float in Hong Kong, emphasising the importance of the Asian market, which accounted for 40 per cent of the fashion giant's 2 billion euros sales last year. The IPO is slated to be priced on June 17, although word has leaked that a high price range of HK$36.50 (US$4.6) to HK$48 per share has been set. The shares are expected to raise as much as US$2 billion.


Last month, American handbag maker Coach, already listed in New York, said its shares may start trading in Hong Kong by the end of the year, even as luggage-maker Samsonite's recent Hong Kong share sale is expected to raise as much as US$1.5 billion. Britain's Burberry is also said to be keen on a Hong Kong listing.


It is no secret that fashion is big business in Asia. But while the money-making and business parts are evolving at a gallop, and the artistic development bits are growing nicely; the educational aspects are lagging behind, especially in Singapore. This is due in part to a kind of misguided snobbery by those -- usually with intellectual aspirations -- who regard fashion as vulgar or frivolous and its admirers as shallow flibbertigibbets.


Who needs Vionnet or Vivier when one has Voltaire and Volcker? (Madeleine Vionnet was a 1920s French designer who pioneered the revolutionary bias cut, which flattered the figure while at the same time allowing for movement. Roger Vivier was a French shoemaker who created and designed the first modern stiletto-heeled shoe in 1954.)


The best designers are, indeed, artists. Couturiers once slaved in studios to hand-make exquisite garments and fine goods, devising innovative techniques and materials. But, alas, their high prices have also led to these items becoming status symbols to be acquired, with no desire to find out their history or why they cost so much in the first place.


Singapore's founding fathers, hewn from the values of financial prudence and austerity, set a positive example to a struggling nation by eschewing materialistic pursuits. Over time, as Singapore prospered, the social ethos evolved to one of pragmatism in which the politics of envy was to be kept at bay. The unhappiness over high ministerial salaries shows that they were right on that count. However, wearing a designer outfit does not necessarily imply arrogance or an insensitive flaunting of wealth.


And if it is viewed as such, it is in part due to Singapore's consumerist value system that equates couture more with flaunting display than with culture. There is a timidity here in attempts to promote fashion as more than just a tai-tai's pastime, into a serious aesthetic pursuit on the same level as art, literature or architecture.


This ambivalence towards fashion and design should change, simply because it makes business sense, if nothing else. Asians are now buying major Western brands because they are recognisable. But when the Asian luxury consumer becomes more confident and more inclined towards discovering new brands, rather than blindly pursuing imported labels, he or she is likely to look at home-grown or Asia-based names next.


The big boys already know this. Last year, French luxury brand Hermes launched a Chinese label called Shang Xia. Louis Vuitton's parent company LVMH has set up L Capital Asia, a US$640 million fund, to invest in promising Asian brands and entrepreneurs; it recently acquired local shoe brand Charles & Keith.


Qeelin, a luxury Chinese jeweller, is already regarded as the 'Tiffany's of China' and is available in Singapore. Shanghai Tang, now part of the Swiss-owned Richemont Group, is an international brand whose executive chairman Raphael le Masne de Chermont told Reuters recently: "This part of the world is becoming the centre of the economic strength of the world. Why on earth should it keep on absorbing creations from the West and not invent its own?"


In nearby Indonesia, buoyed by rising incomes, consumers spent 67.4 trillion rupiah (US$7.9 billion) on clothing and shoes in 2005, with the figure almost doubling to reach 128 trillion rupiah last year, according to Euromonitor. To ride on this trend, The Straits Times in April reported on Singapore's push to promote local fashion. For example, Jakarta's upscale Grand Indonesia mall has set aside more than 10 store fronts for local designers.


In the last few years, Singapore has also become home to indie-chic multi-label boutiques like Blackmarket and Asylum which house cult local as well as international labels. Home-grown fashion brands like Hansel, Mae Pang and Max Tan have also emerged, alongside more mainstream local heroes like Ashley Isham, Raoul and alldressedup.


Could Singapore one day become the fashion capital of Asia? Will global conglomerates find enough good local fashion talent and businesses to invest in?


The signs are positive and there are already several financial and mentoring schemes to aid start-ups. But one also needs a growing pool of designers who are given room to create and avenues to grow; as well as an informed public which recognises that a local or Asian brand can be as good as any of the well-established monograms, and is willing to put its money where its mouth is.


Most importantly, what is needed are people of influence who recognise that fashion should be as much a part of serious public discourse as art, music or design. And not something to be derided as mere frippery and window-dressing.


Copyright (C) 2011, The Straits Times, Singapore