Jing Daily’s Top Posts For The Week#
In case you missed them the first time around, here are some of Jing Daily’s top posts for the week of June 28- July 2:
Louis Vuitton Turns To China For Inspiration
One of the interesting effects of China becoming the second-largest luxury market in the world has been the gradual influence of Chinese design in recent collections by major designers. Late last year, we saw this in Chanel’s pre-fall collection (debuted in Shanghai), and in the run-up to the ongoing Shanghai World Expo saw China-only designs from Prada, Ferragamo and — again — Chanel.
However, the recently unveiled Louis Vuitton spring-summer 2011 menswear collection takes a somewhat different approach than that employed by other fashion houses, adding design cues and materials that are distinctively Chinese while aiming these products at Western, rather than Chinese consumers.
Can Pacific Coffee Out-Brew Starbucks In China?
China is still (rightly) known as a tea-drinking nation, but over the past couple of decades coffee has caught on in a big way among many middle-class professionals. Although instant coffee is more within the reach of students or lower-income individuals, mainland Chinese chains like Ming Tien Coffee Language, Taiwanese chains like UBC and 85c, and international chains like Starbucks have expanded throughout China, competing for the taste buds and cash of burgeoning coffee lovers with slightly higher budgets.
Out of these chains, Starbucks has emerged as the most committed to dominating the China coffee market, opening 376 stores there since 1999 and planning to open “thousands” more in coming years, according to Chief Executive Howard Schultz. By keeping localization to a relative minimum and setting prices in the “affordable luxury” range, Starbucks has remained popular among fast-moving urbanites in big cities.
Shanghai Art Museum Hosts “Martell Artists Of The Year” Awards
This week, the French cognac brand Martell held its “Martell Artists of the Year” awards at the Shanghai Art Museum, celebrating the work of four artists: painter Zhou Chunya, sculptor Liu Jianhua, fashion photographer Feng Hai, and French photographer Bettina Rheims.
According to 99 Art Online, this event is the latest art-focused initiative by Martell, following the creation of the Martell Art Foundation in 2007 and this year’s “Martell Today Art Forum,” held in cooperation with Beijing’s Today Art Museum.
At the awards ceremony, the four [winning] artists were in attendance, sharing their ideas on artistic creation and creativity with invited guests.
Rolls-Royce Opens Eighth China Dealership In Ningbo
Earlier this month, Jing Daily looked at the rapid expansion of Rolls-Royce in China over the past several years, powered initially by business elites in Beijing and Shanghai then — more recently — by younger entrepreneurs in first- and second-tier cities. As many observers of the Chinese auto market have pointed out, the younger age of Rolls-Royce buyers in China relative to their western counterparts is even pushing global trends, leading the automaker to initiate a new rebranding strategy aimed at projecting a more active, sporty image with new models like the Ghost.
Along with its global rebranding initiative, Rolls-Royce is focused on expansion, and, much like other major luxury brands in virtually every industry, this expansion is now going beyond initial markets like Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou and into targeted markets like Hangzhou and Ningbo, where Rolls-Royce just opened its eighth dealership in China.
Jing Daily Recommended Summer Reading
Worth mentioning—and perhaps reclassifying in your mental library—is Chen Jiang Hong’s Mao and Me (Enchanted Lion Books, $19.95). First published in 2008, it’s a sophisticated graphic novel masquerading as a children’s book. The beautifully detailed, somber ink and watercolor paintings vibrantly capture 1960s China from a child’s perspective, and the generous page size allows Chen free rein in laying out and sequencing his images: half a dozen small paintings of ration tickets and scarce foodstuffs along the top of one page, for example, or a dizzying panorama of crowds at a rally sprawling across two others. The prose is lean and elegant, but the story it recounts is hardly bedtime material. With this intensely personal family history, Chen moves into Art Spiegelman territory, marking Mao and Me as a Cultural Revolution counterpart to Maus, slighter and more understated but with a similar emotional punch.