TrendWarriors

Wednesday, March 27 was the China Fashion and Creativity Forum, held in the afternoon at the Great Hall of the People.

It was an honor to be invited to speak at this event. Other presenters were the President of the Shandong RUYI Group, Jane Stockel, CMG from Sincere Creations in Hong Kong, Berit Bergesson from NCS in Sweden, Mr. Ronnie Luo from Leeds University in London, and Mr. Hmano Ysuhiro, a architectural planning expert from Tokyo, Japan.

Topics ranged from urban planning to the rise of Chinese innovation and design. Mr. Liang, the Chairman of the China Fashion Color Association stated China is no longer content to copy the designs it creates. They want the motto to change from “Made in China” to “Designed in China.” Based on the products I’m seeing in China today, I can certainly see this being the case.

The President of the Shandong RUYI Group talked about how China is evolving with the times. Since the 1980s, there has been increasing importance of lifestyle values in China: housing, vacation, pleasure, clothes, moral values and social values all come into play.

In fashion, they have seen how clothing has adapted to lifestyle based on ACTIVITIES. For outdoor use, there are rugged and adaptable clothing for different weather climates. For social events there are ballroom gowns. For the workplace, suits and business wear.

Fashion has also changed with technology. Biological materials can detect poisons in the air, extreme exposure to solar energy, or germs and organisms that may attack the body. Clothing can now improve the standards and living conditions of the people who own and wear them. Fabrics have been developed in China that are waterproof, stainproof, and have protective memories on the surface of the fabrics.

Healthy living is a KEY FACTOR in Chinese society. The question for the future will be not only HOW China catches up with the market and the world, but HOW and WHAT does it contribute to the world and environmental considerations?

Jane Stockel’s presentation was of particular interest. Her topic covered China’s influence on Europe’s fashion and home deco products. She mentioned how classical Asian elements are stronger than before, but reinterpreted for a European market. The traditional red Chinese lantern, for example, might be shown in a neutral color palette of off-white, sand or brown. Split bamboo might be painted black for an outdoor seating arrangement. Chinese door locks are used as elements on candles, and wallpapers with Asian motifs are seen everywhere.

The colors of China are eye-catching as well–red with hot pink is very eye catching, both colors symbolize good luck. Colors like these are found in cross-cultural shops like Shanghai Tang. Products in this retailer are designed for western tastes with Asian colors, themes and embellishments.

The last event I attended during China Fashion Week was the 2007 Grand Color Awarding Ceremony at the headquarters of the China Fashion Color Institute. Chinese design glitterati from all over the country congregated to see who would win color design honors in the fields of architecture, product development for electronics and household goods, transportation, and of course, fashion. It felt like we were at the Oscars!

Between the entertainment, speeches and trophy presentations, we saw four fashion shows featuring some of the best Chinese fashion collections for Spring/Summer 2008.

My favorites were the purple collection and the green/forest/yellow collection. Here is a preview:

I had some time one sunny afternoon to take a walk down Wangfujing Street and watch the pedestrians. Aside from the urban black that you see in any city, the Chinese are particularly fond of wearing color. Lots of brights are out for spring in women’s fashion:

- pinks
- vivid purple
- vibrant sporty yellow
- purple
- sapphire blue

Over-sized handbags are everywhere. Embroidered jeans and Che Guevera motifs on t-shirts and tote bags. Young looks showed tall boots with short skirts over colored tights. Here are a few snapshots:

On March 26, the China Fashion Color Association had a kick off event at the Aimer Lingerie headquarters in downtown Beijing.

The Aimer brand name originates from the French word for “love and favor”. The CEO and founder of Aimer, Mr. Zhang Rongming, was celebrating his company’s 15th Anniversary (1993-200 by opening a lingerie museum in the upper floor of his office complex. He gave visitors, press and VIPs a tour of the office complex that included many luxuriously appointed conference rooms, a showroom floor displaying the most beautiful lingerie I had ever seen, a fashion show on the upper floor, and later a museum grand opening ceremony. The gallery is dedicated to the history, beauty, and cultural significance of women’s under garments in modern life.

It was a gorgeous day, I just had to get out.

The concierge at the Wangfujing Grand hotel was kind enough to set me up on a tour of a hutong neighborhood not far from here. I had been curious to see one, since they seem to be all around this neighborhood behind the Forbidden City. I’m not adventurous enough to go into one by myself. These are tight-knit communities, and besides, I’d get lost in the rabbit-warren like maze of narrow alleys and lanes.

The hutongs are the ancient neighborhoods in Beijing. The word “hutong” is derived from the Mongolian language meaning “water well.” These houses were designed to be a multi-family dwellings, although a single wealthy family might occupy one. They say there is security in numbers, and anywhere from four to seven families might live under the connected roof. Each family’s quarters are divided by walls for privacy, and they face out into a common court yard that is shared by all.

Today, hutong neighborhoods are being bulldozed by the thousands in the name of progress. The government was embarrassed by the ghetto-looking appearance of many, and began to tear them down while making improvements for the Olympics. Throughout Beijing, these ancient places of security and family life are being reduced to mournful piles of dust and rubble. A movement began several years ago to save the hutong, as it is now recognized these ancient dwellings are part of the Chinese culture.

A rickshaw driver took an English speaking guide through one of the renovated hutongs. We hadn’t gone far into the neighborhood when I realized why it would NOT have been a good idea for me to go here alone. All of the tall gray walls began to look the same after awhile, I would have been lost for hours! I asked the guide why the hutong were painted gray. She said it was the color of the common people–only the emperor was permitted to use ochre gold or red on his buildings.

We stopped to visit the lovingly renovated home of a well-to-do family. We walked through two entrances and found ourselves in a sunny courtyard. I say they were wealthy because they had a new Ikea kitchen, modern furniture, and electronics in every room. The vines and plants in the arboretum were healthy and blooming. Birds chirped in a cage, and goldfish swam in a huge bowl on the floor in the dining area. It was really an idyllic little space compared to much of what you see in this developing nation. As I stood out in the courtyard admiring the plum tree, it dawned on me there was no noise, no traffic sounds or voices carrying. I thought, “If I lived in Beijing, I would want to live here…right here.”

A little later, we went to another house and listened to the story of another Chinese woman. She had grown up outside of Beijing, but had moved to the hutong with her husband and raised her daughter there. We were offered green tea, apples and peanuts as a snack, which I thought was really kind of her.

I arrived in Beijing yesterday, it is Easter weekend.

China Fashion Color Association has invited me back to speak at their Fashion Week forum next week. I’m excited to see Emma Zhang and Mr. Zhou again. Jane Stockel CMG from Sincere Creations, Hong Kong is going to be here as well to give a presentation. Chiemi will arrive later next week for a visit as well. I’ve told her she should be a speaker at one of these events–the Chinese are just as interested in Japanese design as they are in European or American trends

As far as I could tell, everything is still changing in the capital of China. The 8/8/08 Summer Olympic deadline is creating a high pitched hum in the entire city. My hotel was on Wangfujing Street, which is the high end shopping area. I went back and forth up and I’d already visited the Forbidden City, and I had visited the Summer Palace last summer when Linda and Lane were here. There were day tours going out to the Great Wall, but I didn’t want to venture too far in case the threatening storm clouds broke loose.

So I hired a car and went back to my favorite haunt, the Da Shan Zi art zone in the Chaoyang District. This is probably my third or fourth visit to the neighborhood. It is always fun to come here, the energy and creativity is inspiring. The area is filled with studios, galleries, shops and cafes. Some of the best contemporary art in China can be found here. However, there are many changes going on to prepare for the Olympics. The streets were muddy from recent rains. There was such a labyrinth of new sidewalks, alleys and driveways, I could not find my favorite coffee house. The little clothing boutique I had looked forward to visiting was now gone, dismantled to make way for a new art space. Still, it was an interesting mix of beauty along with the earth-quake like disruption of road construction. All in the name of progress.

At the FANGART gallery I found a terrific installation called “Flying White.” It was very emotional for me to see the connection between ancient Chinese abstraction and new innovation. The Chinese artist Wu Yang has done urban landscapes using the ancient Chinese technique called “liu bai” of leaving open areas of white space so the subject (painted in black calligraphic brush strokes) leaps from the painting. The white space is intended to allow the imagination to run free. All of the canvases are in black and white, and she paints acrylic on photographic paper. Interesting technique. I think the proportion of black strokes with open white space leaves a feeling of “silence”. For such a noisy and crowded urban environment as modern Chinese cities, I found it comforting.

If anyone is going to Beijing for the Olympics this summer, this place is a MUST SEE cultural visit in Beijing, offering a slice of what young, contemporary and urban life offers. It is considered off the beaten path, but not for long…

http://www.cooperhewitt.org/EXHIBITIONS/multiple_choice/

COOPER HEWITT NATIONAL DESIGN MUSEUM, New York City

EXHIBITION:

Multiple Choice: From Sample to Product
On view November 9, 2007–September 1, 2008

This exhibition will examine sample books and other sampling formats as tools for marketing or recording designs and techniques in a wide variety of media. In use since the eighteenth century, sampling formats provide detailed views into the design tastes of their respective eras.

Drawn from the Museum’s collection, exhibition objects will include sample books of wallcoverings; woven and printed textiles; ribbons, lace and embroidery; sample plates; and drawings and prints showing design alternatives.

The exhibition is organized by Lucy Commoner with Matilda McQuaid and Kimberly Randall. Research assistance provided by Phyllis Dillon.

Sent in by:

Bonnie Bledsoe Fuchs
201 Mint Springs Lane
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
919-969-7499

Interview with José Heerkens, visual artist
The Netherlands

http://www.joseheerkens.nl/

http://www.geoform.net/

Zeeland NB, February 2008

(Background: I met Jose Heerkens, in 2005 at a Dutch Colour Society meeting in the Netherlands. Both of us were impressed with each other’s involvement in color. We immediately struck up a correspondence surrounding travel, art, landscapes, pass times and of course, color! In 2006 Jose published a book on her work called Horizon. I enjoyed reading her impressions of people and places she has visited and how they affected her art and life).

Trend Warriors: It is always interesting how people get started in their particular paths in life. How did you start yours as a visual artist?

Jose Heerkens: Born in a village in the south east of The Netherlands I looked at the rhythm of the trees, the colors and forms of the ploughed fields, the water in the ditches and listened how the people talked and saw how they built and worked. I think the need to understand life is the first step. At the Academy of Art and Design in s-Hertogenbosch (Noord Brabant) I had my education in the art of painting from 1979 to 1984.

TW: Creative people find different sources for inspiration. For some it is people, for others nature or music or experiencing life. At the moment, what do you consider inspirational for your work ?

JH: Space fascinates me. The enormous space that is spread out in landscapes, that unrolls over the earth, is my greatest inspiration. I am astonished by its wideness and silence, by the beauty of endlessness. Space has many levels, light is another level than sound and another than the virtual space. The search for light has come into my work prominently throughout the years. My paintings have become a place where space and light meet each other and here color is the most important instrument to visualize the light.

I search for the life and human on one side and the geometry, the universal standard, on the other side. There is a constant dialogue between construction and intuition. I both need them in my try to understand.

Light and space belong to the art of painting since ages and at the same time they are primary needs to live. Both points of view I keep in mind.

Since a trip through Australia in 1992, the fascination for space has become inescapable and the line became my tool to give form to the space I had seen.

Distributed Light II, 2007, 150 x 150 cm, oil on linen

TW: We share the same experience of being deeply impressed with the Australian landscape. There are wide open places like this in the country where I live, but I think they are harder and harder to find. What else did you find so original about Australia?

JH: Here I experienced the landscape as an immense empty plain, the horizon is low, a straight horizontal line and all this land is covered by an age-old undisturbed silence. The bright light forces you to look very carefully. Small critters moving across the red ground. The air is quivering, it moves and all this in near silence. I was deeply touched by this space.

TW: Relationships with color are personal. What colors are you most attracted to these days? Do you ever find you tire of a color and want to try something new?

JH: Several years I worked with reds, browns, blacks, ochre’s. Those colors carry a feeling of earth, of warmth, volume. During the process of years of painting the relation with land and landscape disappeared. Also the earth-related colors fall into the background. Since the year 2000 all colors came in sight and with this large palette came the different sorts of light. Color is light and space and the line has become carrier of colour, light and space.

The context I am looking for is important. It is hard to explain exactly why I choose certain colors and a certain combination. In their relations colors can both weaken and enhance one another. When diverse colors are put together I search the spatial context. Color and space have to fit together. I continue to modify and change colors until there is a dialogue between them. I think the choice of color is based on the individual as well as on a collective spectrum.

Refraction II – 7, 2007, 35 x 35 cm, oil on linen

TW: Placement of color in your paintings helps the viewer experience wonderful moods, and effects. How do you approach using color when you work?

JH: Color has that fabulous quality to transfer the light and the feeling of cool and warm, of close and far away. Every color carries its own space and its specific character, I use these qualities in my work. Like the space of lemon-yellow is hard to tame while the earth-colors are close and reachable. There are many systems to arrange the colors, but the choice to use certain colors is subjective after all. Even if color is used in harmony or in contradiction, I strive after oneness and balance.

Partition II-4, 2007, 25 x 28 cm, oil on linen

TW: How do you work on your paintings?

JH: My paintings lay on the ground. I set up a first layer and decide the second one. So I build up from the back to the front. Every step is a choice. The choice has to be taken out of many possibilities and the broad path on which I started becomes more narrow during the process. I try to keep the layers clear and transparent to get an open image. The thoughts and choices are the “language” of a painter and the possibility to communicate with the spectator. The choice for color has an important voice in this communication.

Luminous Square IV, 2007, 70 x 70 cm, oil on linen

For me, there is always a surprise in Toronto. Whether it is an unexplored street, a great nightclub, a unique shop or a new restaurant, Toronto is a city-lovers town. People are friendly, climate is temperate, and there is always something new to do. For these reasons and more, my long-time friend John Netland (artist, designer and gardener extraordinaire) moved here from the States and never looked back. He found just the right culture in Toronto to exercise his creative energy.

Having been stranded at the airport due to unpredictable winter weather, John invited me to stay at his home for the evening (hurray!) Armed with umbrellas to repel the elements, we went on a tour of his current locale: Kensington Market.

The chill and mist did not dampen the spirits of the shopkeepers in this little bohemian enclave. Cheerful greetings welcomed us everywhere we stopped. Arts, crafts, fashion, home décor, sidewalk groceries, specialty shops and cafes…how I wish every city had a Kensington Market! What I thought was really great about nearly every shop was that the proprietors are all working to support local crafts people.

Here were a few of my favorite boutiques:

Bungalow featured mid-century modern furniture and deco items—including brown dial-up telephones! Chic thrift store clothing and the most amazing selection of leather jackets I’ve ever seen made this place really special.

I wandered forever in the newly opened Blue Banana. This artists market features the work of local crafts people, although there were stalls featuring hand-made products from Asia and Africa. One of a kind gifts, paintings, pottery, clocks, cards and paper, jewelry, fashion accessories were all on display.

John’s good friend Cora opened a business called Miss Cora’s Kitchen. In this funky shop she runs a bakery, café and catering service. Her treats at the counter were delectable!

I met Natalie, the owner of Heart on Your Sleeve. Her shop features recycled clothing and accessories crafted by local designers. Her mantra is Made in Canada, cruelty free, sweatshop free, and organic. There were the most amazing women’s long underwear for winters in snowy country… You would never find another pair like them! Really ingenious. I couldn’t decide between them and a scarf by fiber artist Tanya Hagen. In the end and after much internal turmoil, I went for the scarf. The practical side of me won out and I needed something to help brace me for the chilly weather. I’m still wearing it as I type this blog!

Standing out on the rainy sidewalk, I wasn’t sure from the storefront what kind of place Kid Icarus was… When I entered, I realized I was standing in a tiny print shop. A newly silk-screened 2008 calendar hung on the wall, each month featuring the design of a different local graphic artist. The owners of the shop told me the artists had been commissioned to use only two colors in their work. They were surprised so many had opted not to use BLACK as one of the colors, and the combos they came up with were very striking with their greens and teal blues. Small press print work, hand-made cards, journals, t-shirts, and silk-screened gift boxes made for some very original products in this store.

Right around the corner were Asian surplus stores. There were endless choices in Chinese tea sets or graceful Japanese serving dishes. The price was right for small bamboo steamers or restaurant sized woks. Baskets from Borneo and silks from Thailand…the shopping was fun in little China. I’ll be back one day…with a bigger suitcase!

The FinnStyle store in Minneapolis used to be located in the Warehouse District right around the corner from the Colwell headquarters. Before it moved to its new, high traffic location in Gavidae Commons (about a five block walk downtown) I used to stop by the store during lunch hour looking for gifts.

Everything in FinnStyle is enticing: the sculpted Artek furniture, sparkling displays of ittala glass, the sturdiness of Hackman cookware, the unique personalities of the Toikka birds. I always drift to the soft good section. Home products and fashion accessories are featured in the abundantly colorful Marimekko textiles. Though I am bewitched by the saturated hues, the riot of color never seemed appropriate for my house with its calm, subdued palette. I was never infatuated enough to buy anything except some paper napkins or gift stationery.

One day my neighbor Betty went to FinnStyle looking for a colorful table cloth. They didn’t have quite what she had in mind. The store directed her to a seamstress who custom made soft goods for the store using Marimekko fabrics. Betty set up an appointment and went to the woman’s studio in Bay City, WI. She came back with a vibrant orange table cloth, custom made to fit her dining room table. Not only that, but Betty raved about the owner of the shop, the architecture of her studio and the idyllic beauty of the surrounding area. She described a modernist retreat set in the heart of Wisconsin farmland. I was intrigued.

Last weekend was the seamstress’s annual holiday sale. The first snowstorm of the season hit the midwest. When Betty, her daughter and I trekked over to Wisconsin, we were greeted with silent gray forests and dunes of snow covering the fields. It was hard to believe we were traveling to an oasis of color!

Margaret has a lovely contemporary studio built by the acclaimed architect David Salmela. The name of her business is Banbury Cross. It is the perfect showcase for Marimekko fabrics, and also a comfortable atmosphere to browse and dream. Tall ceilings, hardwood floors, and expansive windows take in the views of Lake Pepin and the surrounding woods and fields. White walls provide a clean backdrop for the incredible depth of Marimekko colors. The variety of products Margaret makes is astounding, and her craftsmanship is perfection.

Two hours passed in what seemed like 30 minutes. Betty and I wistfully combed through tote bags, pillow cases, napkins, and table cloths. We oogled over small clasp purses and cosmetic bags. Betty bought Christmas gifts I dreamed about what would work best for the bedroom closet doors. We found it difficult to decide and even more difficult to leave!

I asked Margaret if a particular color of cloth was selling best for her these days. She said her customers very often are drawn to the rich blues in the Marimekko line: dark indigo, brilliant sapphire, lustrous azul.

She said people often travel great distances to her studio at Banbury Cross, just to feast their eyes on the color.

We return again to the adage: Color sells.