REUTERS
A model presents a creation from the Vivienne Tam 2014 Fall/Winter collection during New York Fashion Week.
Since 1993, when her "East Meets West" collection at New York's Fashion Week landed her the cover of Women's Wear Daily, Vivienne Tam has explored links between Chinese and Western aesthetics.
In her Fall/Winter 2014 show at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week on Feb 9, Tam partnered with the Chinese social communications app WeChat to give Chinese fans a look behind the scenes of the lead-up to a show that as always, is inspired by Tam's Chinese heritage.
"Everything I do is in the hope of promoting Chineseness and mixing the two worlds together," Tam says. "I'm excited to use social media to promote a view of globalism, because I've always believed in Chinese culture and using what I do to interpret Chineseness in my work."
Interested users are invited to download WeChat, which has more than 100 million users worldwide, and add VTAMFASHION as a contact through which they will receive exclusive, real-time updates and photos of Tam's preparations and activities before and during the show. Four sets of customizable chat wallpapers are also available to download through the program.
"We are excited to partner with the iconic Vivienne Tam brand to provide a new interactive experience for the New York Fashion Week audience," says Jameson Hsu, GM of WeChat USA. "By adding Vivienne Tam's official account on WeChat, users can step into her world of fashion."
Tam, who is an avid user of the app, described the platform as a combination of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
"It's all-inclusive global reach amazes me," she says. "The opportunity to connect with people, especially in the fashion world, is exciting. It adds something to how we communicate."
Users were able to participate in a real-time group chat, with a select few being the lucky recipients of front-row seats and backstage access at the show. The WeChat promotion also allowed aspiring models to take to the catwalk, in an unprecedented move designed to appeal to young Chinese fashionistas. Tam believes they are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
"Chinese people are changing so quickly," Tam says. "I really feel that Chinese shoppers are beginning to understand quality, and the Internet has changed the way they look at things and the way they shop. In China, companies used to compete purely on price, but now they are competing and promoting creativity in different processes. As a result, people in China are looking more into Chinese products."
It wasn't always this way, Tam says. The designer, who was born in Guangzhou and raised in Hong Kong, relocated to New York after college out of necessity, she says. When she began designing clothing, Chinese buyers were only interested in Western luxury brands.
"From the beginning, I wanted to change the way people looked at Chinese culture," she says. "They said, 'You'll never succeed, because you're Chinese and you're using your Chinese name, designing clothing inspired by Chinese culture.'"
Tam's 1995 "Mao" collection is now installed in the permanent archives of Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum and New York's Museum of FIT.
Tam previously collaborated with companies for the Chinese market. In 2012, she designed special amenities for Chinese visitors to the Hilton Hotel chain, for its "Hilton Huanying" program. Other US brands including Valentino and Burberry have also moved to target Chinese customers, holding off-season shows and events in China, and live-streaming fashion shows for Chinese audiences.
Tam is working on a line of household items and is thinking about a fashion line inspired by China's ancient Dunhuang Cave drawings, she says.
"I'm so excited to encourage people to look into our own culture, because there's so much to explore in bringing Chinese history and culture into a modern context," she says. "To see all these changes now, I'm very happy about this moment."
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