It’s going to be raining men. Come chillier times, I have a preference for men’s attire, and over the last few days, my lens has been more drawn to those of the male persuasion. Gents benefit from fashions that don’t reveal skin, just as the deadly sex looks appealing while displaying legs, cleavage, shoulders and all those other delectables.
Category: Beijing Street Style
After Mihuang Show, China Fashion Week 2009
Held at the Beijing Hotel and D-Park at 798, the second 2009 China Fashion Week celebrates the designs of brands based all around China, but with something of a focus in Guangdong and Zhejiang. I will have quite a more on this later, but for now here is Terry, a stylist at Tony Studio, after the “Mihuang” Qi Gang Cashmere High Class Fashion Show.
Bye Bye Disco
From a small town in Yunnan, Peipei runs Bye Bye Disco, one of the most notable shops on Nanluoguxiang, with boyfriend Pang Kuan, a member of disco-punk hybrid act New Pants. More on Bye Bye Disco on the website of That’s Beijing, a magazine that is now defunct. This place is beloved of foreigners, who come for the iconic Feiyue sneakers (available all the way up to size 47 at Bye Bye Disco). Feiyue is so hip these days that there is even a blog.
Snow Falls on Central Beijing
The snow was falling hard, preventing much venturing out today, but I found this stylish individual right around the corner from my place.
This is the first time I have seen such snow in all the years that I have been here.
Festive Graphic Artist
Su Hang is a graphic designer who runs his a business with his wife, Mimi, in Beijing’s CBD. I met him at the opening dinner for a very chic new restaurant called Hanshe (汉èˆ) for which he did much of the design of promotional and other materials. Buying much of his wardrobe in Hong Kong, Su Hang normally dresses in a eye-catching manner.
Velvet jackets are fairly common, but one doesn’t encounter bow ties so frequently. It strikes me that that I should attempt to replicate this outfit for some of the upcoming holiday parties (that I am already hearing about).
Queen of City Life
What a rebellious outfit! I was pleased to encounter charming but irreverent Shanghaier Ding Ying (ä¸é¢–）the other day, after not seeing her for almost two years. She was the first editor from a major publication to profile me, not so long after Stylites started. Over a year after my profile appeared in the City Life section of Modern Weekly, Ding Ying suggested to her colleague Chen Pu that I might write a weekly column for them. I am especially proud of this, the only column that I write in Chinese.
After seven years at Modern Weekly, she is moving on next month to be features editor at a big fashion magazine. Maybe she will be the next Chinese female editor compared to Anna Wintour.
Funny that when googling, the first pic of her is with someone else who has been on Stylites.
Chic Pic Maker
I ran into my friend, photographer Anne Li – who has appeared here before – at the NOTCH (Nordic and Chinese arts) festival that just opened. Being a gentleman and a sophisticate, I immediately poured her some coca-cola in a champagne flute.
The press gift at NOTCH was the second best I have ever received: the collectible October 2009 Wallpaper* with its provocative Karl Lagerfeld cover. The best gift from an event I ever received was the full-sized bottles of Vidal Sassoon shampoo and conditioner received at the opening of Izzue in Sanlitun. I like swag I can use, as opposed to the multitude of passport picture holders and glasses frame liners one gets from the luxury brands.
Reading their comments in this Wallpaper*, Lagerfeld seems pretty arrogant and, despite all his brilliance and eccentricity, hollow in comparison to Philippe Starck.
Porcelain and Bus
Graphic designer June picked up her dress at a second-hand shop on Gulou street.
She has quite a collection of pendants.
This one is of a bus.
Northeastern Designers
Vanessa is from Harbin and her boyfriend is from Shenyan. She is a graphic designer and he makes 3D cartoons or something like that. They have been to Beijing for less than a year, but plan to stay.
By the way, Harbin is one of my favorite places in China. Feed a duck to the tigers in Siberian Tiger Park. The suspense is intense as the tiger awkwardly paddles through the pond in pursuit. The ducks just nonchalantly cruise along as if there is no monster cat a meter behind, but they sometimes do even escape, unlike the chicken or pheasants who have no chance. Also make sure to have a shot of an obscure vodka at the Russian Café, on Zhongyang Lu, probably my favorite café in the world. Shenyang is not such a must-see, though it does have a very manageably-sized mini-Forbidden City built by Nurhaci as well as several late-90s examaples of provinical “shock-architecture.”
Where are the Seniors and the Stout?
Last night, a senior fashion editor based here commented that Stylites rejects all but the the young and the slim. I always try to find stylish older people, but it is tough. When they exist, they are usually in restaurants or in cars on the way to dining, but more comments on this later.
The idea that I reject weightier people had not crossed my mind. It might be true although I might plead that Beijing lacks a sizable overweight demographic. Also, note that I display no addiction to conventional Chinese beauties – others have complained that there are not enough beauties on my blog. Of course, I might just be photographing those I rate as beauties.
Fashion Student
Regina Ye, who makes me think of this girl, is studying fashion design here in Beijing.
Wind: Back in Fashion?
Today the wind was blowing like it was about to go out of style. But, of course, it is one of the permanent things come October. We can debate whether wind creates beauty or disorder, but let us agree that it brings a mystery mixed with vulnerability to some pedestrians as they protect themselves from its gusts. One fact we know is she likes that sweet cheese concoction so popular on Nanluoguxiang. I think her succulent cashmere shawl comes from Woo Scarf, just down the street.
When I got home, my eyes were red and filled with dust, perhaps including some tasty fertilizer runoff particles just blown in from the countryside.
Floral Hipster
This guy wasn’t eager to pose, so this is not a good shot. He is quite exceptional though.
Still Red at 60
Well, he’s a bit above sixty, but he professes to love what the Party has done for him and he was the most interesting person I found on the square. I only made it to square in the very last hours before they removed all of the displays that were there for the bash celebrating 60 years of progress and prosperity under the reds. New comfort and wealth is probably what made all the tourists on the square happy, but the October One event itself seemed more of an old school dictatorship-style parade celebrating military prowess, nukes and all.
Anyway, jet lagged, I raced to the square not long after arriving from the States, hoping to find all sorts of bizarre provincials wearing dramatically overwrought ensembles proclaiming their new treasures. I longed for LV print alligator-skin coats with chinchilla fur collars or people walking stylish poodles. Failing the horde of brazen arrivistes, I thought there would at least be packs of dainty lads with bleached blond hair, ass-tight black jeans, Jackie O style sunglasses, leopard print windbreakers, and zebra print scarves and the equivalent females. Previous forays into the provinces have yielded visual delicacies such as these. The square was instead filled with a group that showed to me that rising living standards have brought less risk taking in fashion. The provincials are not an exciting bunch compared even to Beijingers I encounter in the subway. The homogeneity of the crowd was almost like a return to Mao suits, but that would have had quite a bit more charm.
A bit Dazed
A young accounting student who hopes to get into a more creative line of work.
I seem to keep photographing people with these trousers.