In the most recent several years, designer's and brand-name garments, flaunting 'out of the ordinary' styles, have gradually become generally available.
Stepping off the escalator now at the Sunrise Department Store, shoppers are confronted by a 'designers' gallery'; the new, import-oriented Sincere Department Store allocates an exclusive gallery for designer Pan Tai-li's fashions; at the Howard Plaza Fashion Boutique, local designer Lu Fang-chi's dresses compete well with international name-brands; at the numerous dress shops near Hsimenting and Chunghsiao East Road, local fashion designers are 'hidden' behind specific trademark labels, which establish the particular tastes of individual companies.
"Individual fashion designers are beginning to stand out in Taiwan," notes Chang Li-chung, who studied in West Germany and is now a lecturer at the Department of Textiles and Clothing, Fu Jen Catholic University.
Ten years ago, when she graduated from the same department, hardly any of her classmates managed to get a job in fashion design. This year, her graduates are 100 percent employed, and the most outstanding had two or three good job opportunities waved at them.
The fostering of fashion designing here has been closely related to social affluence— Taiwan's sharp rise in living standards and the accompanying specialization in vocations. The annual average Gross National Product now exceeds US$3,000, underwriting sharply enhanced general purchasing capabilities; the clothing-design industry has directly benefited.
Specialists in the field trace the roots of modern fashion design in the ROC back eight years ago to the individual enterprise of some young, personally motivated pioneers. They each began with annual sales in the NT$10 to 20 million range (about US$250,000 to 500,000), and groped their way. In order to survive, they found themselves frequently yielding to foreign fashion trends, which then prevailed in Taiwan. However, the most serious fashion designers worked very hard to establish their own individual styles, step by step.
"The ROC consumer now has a kaleidoscope of fashion to choose from," remarks fashion designer Pan Tai-li, who is also president of Dumu Enterprises.
Sunrise Department Store designer Huang Chia-chun—bold, avant-garde styles.
Avant-garde styles are the trademark of Huang Chia-chun, full time fashion designer of the Sunrise Department Store. The modeling and colors of her recent offerings are uniformly bold; the colors glow-fluorescent oranges and rich greens.
Huang impresses people as neat, and with a brisk character. She likes to wear a dark, close-fitting, self-designed jump-suit, her hair styled short but well-arranged at the back.
She grew up in a family headed by a well-to-do lawyer, and was educated in France, the U.S., and Japan. Dark eyes snapping, she recalls that in days gone by, when her classmates abroad mentioned Taiwan's association with product counterfeiting, she felt both angry and ashamed. She is elated now that the counterfeiters are on the run. Three years ago she graduated in first place from a U.S. design school, determined to return to Taiwan and "some day, let the whole world know that I am a Taiwan fashion designer—a first-class one."
The styles of Liu Lung, of the Liang Lung Company, are quite different from Huang Chia-chun's. "Simplicity is beauty," holds Liu, who pioneered in the dress markets of Taiwan ten years ago. He pointed out a pink, clean-lined sweater: "My style is like a calm sea."
The market he seeks for Liang Lung is the uprising new consumer group from 18 to 30, with three to four piece outfits in the price area from NT$3,000-5,000 (US$75-125).
Liu, who studied fashion design in the United States, feels that dresses in uncomplicated styles and soft colors will not be out of fashion even after three to five years. Also style advisor for the Shiau Yah Co., an importer of international haute couture, he sees dressing oneself as creating one's own image, and hopes to educate the younger set of consumers here to not blindly follow Japanese fashion, but to develop their own lively, vigorous image.
The sharp increase in career women in the ROC has been a special impetus for the designer dress industry, boosting advances in both quality and styles.
Pan Tai-li says most of her customers are such career women—professors, lawyers, doctors. Their work and meetings require quality clothing. And they have the wherewithal and desire to purchase designer clothing that is definitely "out of the ordinary."
A graduate of the Department of Fashion Design, Shih Chien College, Pan seeks to bring out "the heroic spirit of China" ... with broad, unconstrained styles specifically stressing cut and heavy shoulder padding. "The shoulders present the only straight line of the human body," she asserts; "after being padded, they will never allow a dress to lose shape no matter how compromised the wearer's figure."
Hair short, pointed chin outthrust, slim Pan was wearing a man-styled suit dress with heavy shoulder pads "to arm myself for battle in a competitive world."
Only after bathing and changing to her night clothes does she begin to work on design. Under the steady pressure of marketing challenges, Pan admits, in a whole year she has designed only twelve true exhibition dresses; she sees most of her other designs as compromises with commercial trends of the market.
Compared to the fashion design activity in women's wear, designing for men's clothing is quiescent. Hsu Feng-shun, exclusive designer for the men's brand Jun, says that males over 30 in Taiwan chiefly buy foreign labels "What they care about is brand."
But with the overall reduction in the nation's tariffs on textile products this year, Hsu said, he can compete with import clothing now with better materials and fine handwork.
Soft-spoken Hsu describes his designs as "romantic, but expressing the rebelling male character at the same time." A graduate of the Department of Fine Arts of the Kaohsiung College of Business, he pointed out a jacket: "I stress lines," he noted. Around his studio were piles of winter clothes; textiles, and fashion books.
The prices of his designs are beyond the purchasing capabilities of most youths, and his sales are thus targeted at affluent men between 35 and 50. A 100 percent growth in sales in the spring and summer seasons this year, compared with the same period last year, has given the 28-year-old Hsu great confidence in his competitive battle.
Although the sharp rise of fashion designers is a new phenomenon-just the last two years—some designers were very active 10 years ago. Specialists in the clothing industry see the most eminent distinction between the old and new 'generations' of fashion designers as the stress by the former on 'individual character,' and of the latter on 'fashion' itself.
"Previously, people were excited by the new and strange. Creativity was then always more important than marketing," recalls Chao Chi-chien, who began to promote his own dress designs at the Ching Kuang Market ten years ago. He designed a memorable, multi-style skirt formed from two pieces of differently colored cloth, which could be worn with the 'positive' or 'negative' side out, or by lifting back some part—five varying styles. The price was two to three times higher than that of an ordinary skirt—a more limited market.
As fulltime fashion designer for Yun Hsiang I women's wear, Chao continues to emphasize 'ingenious compositions' —suits or dresses composed of differently colored and styled movable pieces. But in addition to such individualistic styles, he also designs for the overall market.
Chao's fashions are featured at Hongkong's Lane Crawford, along with their European dresses, in quantities of some thousands per season.
The newer ROC fashion designers frankly admit to being 'different' from the 'pioneers'. "Pan Tai-li and Chao Chi-chien stress their personal tastes; we stress fashion," says Yeh Chia-ling, who founded her own company less than a year ago.
Yeh goes to Japan and Hongkong twice or thrice in a season "to catch up with fashion trends," visiting fashion shows and collecting fashion books to cue in on colors and styles.
She was originally an exclusive fashion designer for another company. She says that more fashion designers have recently begun to establish their own companies because some of the older companies do not know how to make proper use of a fashion designer.
Putting sales as total priority, she says, the old-line bosses often hand them foreign design sketchs and tell them just to copy them. Besides, she says, the startup funds for your own fashion business are not too high. "I started with NT$1.5 million (about US$40,000). I'm not inferior to others, so why wouldn't I do it on my own?" She began to work with dresses at 20, in a commercial tailoring class in the central city of Taichung.
Many, like Yeh, have no formal design school background. Chen Tsai-hsia also began in a tailor's shop. "I only had a primary school education; therefore, I had to work harder than others." She worked 12-hour days, with no holidays. At present, she is fashion designer and manager of the Hsiatzy Co., which markets three brands in Taiwan.
Though somewhat shy personally, Chen is aggressively extending the company's business antennas abroad. "With eight designers in my company, the domestic market is too narrow to make the fullest use of their talents. We have to expand in the foreign market."
Hsiatzy mainly exports to Japan, where no textile quota limits their efforts. The dresses are completely designed by Hsiatzy, and one third bear the Hsiatzy brand labels.
A special feature of Hsiatzy export sweaters is the use of bright swatches and beads along with traditional Chinese embroidery. Unit prices of such design sweaters range from US$50 to 200, compared with the average US$70 to 80 of other top-grade Taiwan fashion sweaters.
Fashion designers returned from abroad bring new ideas back with them. Chien Hui-ying, who worked in France for nine years, founded the Meo International Fashion Co. in Taiwan. Originally, it was to provide information on fashion and dress designing to local manufacturers, but not itself participate in the marketing, etc.
"I just wanted to offer 'software.' But the domestic market seems unable to accept the idea as yet. Therefore, our company now also acts as a trading company." Chien sought out buyers abroad for Meo's design work, to be manufactured in Taiwan factories. Styles range to NT$20,000 (US$500).
Local manufacturers also entrust their designing to Chien.
"They are willing to try now, but do not know what to try," she complains, speaking at a staccato rate. Some entrust her the design work, then fail to decide on necessary figure coordinates; in not a few cases, there is a midway breakoff.
Manufacturers and consumers also complain about fashion designers. "The most often heard criticism is 'imitation ... copy.' And really, many designers do not have their own particular taste, but only specify material that is a little better, and style touches that are a little more special," declares Chiang Hsiao-ming, a buyer of ready-made clothes for A.M.C., a U.S. company.
"Most Taiwan designs still reflect fashion instead of creating fashion," puts in Cheng Li, a master of textile printing and dyeing with the China External Trade Development Council. And many local fashion designers still lack analytical capabilities relative to fabrics, figure data, and colors. "For example, the dark colors just recently in fashion were not suitable to the comparatively shorter, darker complected Chinese."
One beginner in fashion design, in her early 20s, on the other hand, feels strongly that "design means original creativity" but admits, "I am also imitating now, you might say." In order to survive, round the world, a great many designers simply follow accepted fashion trends.
"The current overall level of fashion design in Taiwan is roughly equal to that of Japan 15 years ago," claims Chen Hsiang-mei, a former fashion designer for France's Chloe Co. She notes that fashion design in Japan also went from copy, to rough imitation, to establishment of its own international design credibility, and "like a baby, fashion design in Taiwan is now struggling to stand by itself."