Aesthetic: casual staples with Chinese influenced detailing 

Features: ethical business model, focus on natural and sustainable materials 

Fabrics: cotton, modal, silk, bamboo, wool, cashmere 

Personal favourites: silk blouses, cashmere jumpers, maxi dresses

NuoMi is currently having its holiday sale, with clothing up to 50% off. So if you happen to be in Shanghai, think about checking it out at Xinle Lu, Biyun Lu, Wujiang Lu or Changning Lu. 

Jade en plus

Aesthetic: monochromatic urban chic, Balmain meets Haider Ackermann

Features: draping and layering, unconventional and asymmetric cuts

Fabrics: silk, cotton, lots and lots of wool

Personal favourites: extremely well-tailored trousers, fitted silk dresses, long-sleeved tops for layering

ZucZug

Aesthetic: relaxed, quirky atheletic hip; called China's Marc Jacobs by the WSJ

Features: bright primary and secondary colours; fun, graphic prints

Fabrics: wool, camel, organic cotton, silk

Personal favourites: colourful winter coats, sportswear-inspired dresses

Noteworthy mention: Silk King, which carries on Shanghai's tradition of silk and garment trade. Its branches are ubiquitous across Shanghai, but I especially recommend its multi-story flagship store on Nanjing Road, which offers the widest range of products - including fabrics, bedding, scarves, readymade and tailored clothing, sleepwear, etc. - and the best service.

Labels: fashion notes, jade en plus, nuomi shanghai, shanghai, silk king, zuczug

12/21/2012 [4]

As I make ready to return to Shanghai at the end of February - a more semi-permanent move this time, for the purposes of a new job - I have been sifting through the stacks of worldly belongs that have accumulated in my family home in Sydney, trying to decide what I need to take with me. This is obviously not the time to be buying still more stuff that will not fit into my 30kg luggage allowance, and yet I persist. What gives?

SNIFFING

China, and even the glittering fount of cosmopolitanism that is Shanghai, is a bit of a desert wasteland when it comes to perfumes. Another cause for distress: glass bottles full of alcohol are not the easiest (or most light-weight) things to take onto a plane. I shall have to hope that a few full-sized bottles of perennial favourites (Fille en Aiguilles, Vetiver Oriental, Bandit, Timbuktu) and a hefty cosmetics bag full of decants (many of them courtesy of Dain) and Travalos will serve until I can next spare the time for a trip back in Sydney. In the meantime, I am spraying myself with clouds of scents that didn't make the full-bottle cut, and rediscovering in the process perfumes that I haven't worn in ages (Like This by Etat Libre d'Orange), not to mention new purchases that I have not spent nearly enough time with (Juliette Has A Gun Vengeance Extreme).

LISTENING

Alberto Iglesias' incredibly atmospheric score for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which I really hope will win the Oscar for best score come February 26th. This is the second Le Carre adaptation that Iglesias has written the music for (the other was The Constant Gardener, a very differently flavoured soundtrack for which he also garnered an Oscar nomination), and he captures the paranoia and the elegiac tone of both book and film to perfection.

READING

I have no self-control when I step into a bookstore. My backlog of "new books I have yet to read" is so long, it could probably make for a small library in itself. Yet a book, I tell myself, is something that will never truly go to waste. What's more, I like to know that I'm doing my part in keeping the commercial publishing industry alive; the printed word, too, because, goodness knows, I spend a lot more on paper books than I do on new airplane-reading-material for my Kindle. Of the latest additions to my shelves (image below), I think the two volumes of Camus' notebooks (a gift from Melissa) will come with me to China.

The new (newish?) Daniel Mendelsohn translation of Constantine P. Cavafy's collected poetry ("The streets in which you pace/will be the same, you'll haunt the same familiar places,/and inside those same houses you'll grow old") is proving to be a delight, possibly even surpassing my abiding affection for the Rae Dalven translations ("Every effort of mine is a condemnation of fate;/and my heart is - like a corpse - buried"). But it will probably stay behind, purely on account of its size. The rest? Well, I guess I'd better get cracking reading.

WEARING

Whether I'm pairing it with a cream kitten-bow blouse at work or a casual white tee (and a statement necklace in chunky, rough-hewn amber) over the weekend, my navy Brother Skirt from Les Prairies de Paris is all class in a relaxed sort of way, with its two side pockets, strip of black suede running down the front, and hem just skimming the knees.

I have been wearing wool pencil skirts a lot lately; and blazers; and knits. The funny thing is that the weather has been so peculiar this summer in Sydney that it will hardly be much of a shock to the system to fly across the equator and suddenly find myself in a northern winter rather than the chilliest southern summer in my own personal memory. I wouldn't have to do anything more than throw on a coat.

An even more satisfying acquisition than my Les Prairies skirt, is my new Ole Lynggaard Sweet Drops bracelet. Not three weeks after I wrote this post about the Sweet Drops, I added one to my small, extremely select collection of "every day" jewellery. After near half an hour looking through the selection at Jordan's Jewellers (Market Street, Sydney), I eventually picked out an olive wrap-around leather bracelet, and a white gold/moonstone "Dew Drop" and silver/black onyx "Sweet Drop" to wear on it. It was a tough decision to make. Seeing them in person, one cannot fail to appreciate how carefully and meticulously they have been crafted. Each of the "Dew Drops" and "Sweet Drops" have a clasp that allows them to hold tightly to the band without scratching the soft leather. Each is further designed to hang only at a certain angle; the charms have room for movement, but not so much that they can rotate 360 degrees around the band and irritate the wearer. My bracelet is easy, understated, and a joy to wear.

EATING

All the things that I will miss in China: fresh (and affordable) mangoes/figs/papaya/avocados, Australian yogurt, Whisk & Pin gluten-free muesli, an Italian-strength espresso, newly shucked oysters that don't cost an arm and a leg (and won't lead to food-poisoning), really good Lebanese food… I could go on and on.

Labels: albert camus, alberto iglesias, cavafy, consumer diaries, etat libre d'orange, juliette has a gun, les prairies de paris, ole lynggaard, shanghai

2/14/2012 [2]

Scene from a silent film starring Ruan Lingyu (1910-1935)

A city of many faces, Shanghai is easy to describe in terms of cliches: crowded, materialistic, ruthless in business, giddy with self-admiration, cosmopolitan, fast-changing, obsessed with all that is new and foreign. Like most cliches, there are aspects of truth to all of these, woven deep into the reputation and the identity of the city.

Then there is also the fabled pre-revolutionary Shanghai of the 1920s-1940s, the "Paris of the Orient" (or, as it was also known, the "Whore of the Orient"), fictionalised so many times in the Hollywood imagination as an exotic, somewhat decrepit, shambles of treachery and vice, glamour and beauty - where East meets West, urban meets rural, and trouble and creative energies abound. A treaty port and a classic example of a colonial semi-periphery before 1949, Shanghai's fate and prosperity was always less synchronous with that of the rest of China. Spies, revolutionaries, gangsters and traitors pepper the city's cultural history and urban legend, contributing to much of its allure.

Though it has always been at the frontmost battle-lines of modernity in China, the Shanghai I left as a child in 1992 is very different to the city I return to now, two decades later. The most visible and striking signs of its recent development: elevated roads and Metro winding their way all over Shanghai, and the cluster of skyscrapers which map out the now-defining skyline of Pudong District, an area east of the Huangpu River that was sparsely populated farmland as recently as early 1990s.

Frequent trips to Shanghai since 2000 have kept me abreast of all the goings on, so that now, I can once again think of Shanghai as being "my city" - although it helps that I never lost my ability to speak Shanghainese. My apartment is located in the former French Concession, what people are usually referring to when they speak of "Old Shanghai", which has managed to retain a sizeable amount of its colonial-era architecture*. Within this little portion of the city, you will find live jazz, Shanghai's own international film festival, cafes and beer gardens, tailors and cobblers, and perhaps the only authentic French baguettes in mainland China.

"My Shanghai" is quaint, gaudy, a bit of the old and a bit of the new; it's charmingly savvy, undeniably elitist, but still refreshingly prone to quiet acts of class warfare. For every store attendant who is as polite and as helpful as service personnel in the United States, you will encounter one in Shanghai who will dump a handful of small change directly onto the counter rather than into your outstretched palm, just to derive some small pleasure in seeing you pick them up individually, like chopsticks scraping the bowl for the last grains of rice. And you have got to love that.

***

Grand Gateway at Xujiahui, where I do a lot of my grocery shopping

Afternoon commuters on Metro Line 3

Spotted on the escalator at South Shanxi Road Metro Station

Flowers in the courtyard of my apartment complex

"Yunnan Snow Peaches 90RMB each" (at City Shop, Central Huaihai Road)

Huaihai Road, a major shopping boulevard

Fireworks seen from my bedroom window

Pizza di quattro formaggi from Pasta Fresca

Huating Road, a quiet lane in the French Concession, running perpendicular to Huaihai Road and Changle Road

Feria boutique on Changle Road where I recently had some silk blouses made

Zhigao Shoes, also on Changle Road, where you can order handmade shoes **

*One of the quirks of this part of the city is its underground: the colonial governments of the different occupying countries (among them France, United States, and England) each installed their own plumbing in their own concessions during the late-19th/early-20th centuries. Water and sewage pipes of different standardised widths and thicknesses still mark the leaky boundaries of those different occupied zones.
**Expect a post later of my first experience with having shoes custom-made.

Parts of this article are adapted from the post "Shanghai girls" on Fire of Spring, 16 July 2011. Photos were taken on my iPhone using Instagram,.

Labels: globe trotter, ruan lingyu, shanghai

10/13/2011 [4]

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