Hong Kong aims to be high fashion capital

Press, 12 July 1984, Page 20

Hong Kong aims to be high fashion capital

NZPA-Reuter Hong Kong

Jeans and T-shirts brought fame and fortune to Hong Kong but now the territory’s fashion designers, spurred by trade restrictions, want to make it a high fashion capital. A decade ago the “Made in Hong Kong” label meant the garment was cheap, both in price and quality, so cheap that the United States and European nations, asserting that the competition was killing their garment industries, forced quotas and tariff restrictions on the British colony.

However, export limits did not keep Hong Kong down. In the face of the restrictions that climbed this year to cover 80 per cent of its exports to the United States, and even higher for Europe, the territory has determinedly maintained its status as the world's top garment exporter.

The small capitalist colony at the southern edge of China, with clothing exports totalling about $3.7 billion, topped Italy, which exported $3.4 billion, in the category, and South Korea, which had $3 billion, according to 1982 trade statistics provided by the Hong Kong Government.

“Hong Kong is a tiny peanut in the world market,” said Godfrey Malig of the quasi-Governmental Trade Development Council (T.D.C.). “But the garment industry is No. 1.” However, Hong Kong, in spite of its importance as a manufacturing centre, has not yet achieved fashion E” 1 status like Paris, New York, even Tokyo, a situation its designers want to change. Some Hong Kong designers, including Eddie Lau, the California-born, Diane Freis, and the Britishborn, Jenny Lewis, sell well in Europe and the United States. The creations of others, like Tenny Cheung, whose sportswear has carried the Esprit and Fiorucci labels and who now designs for the Louis London label of a West German manufacturer, are well-known, even if the de-

signer’s name is not. “Designers in New York and Tokyo have succeeded in gaining the cachet of high fashion appeal,” complained a Hong Kong fashion magazine recently, “So why do local talents continue to be considered little more than factory tradesmen, only, a cut above the cutters?”

Part of the reason, some local designers say, is that Hong Kong’s wealthy customers have been slow to recognise the hometown talent.

“Hong Kong doesn’t work the way other places work,” said Ms Freis. Instead of boutiques promoting local designers, she said, the best shops often carried only imported clothes, and wealthy former Americans, British and Chinese alike favoured French and Italian designs, which, ironically, were often manufactured in Hong Kong. Giorgio Armani, Valentino, Pierre Cardin, Christian Dior, Yves St Laurent, and the American designers, Liz Claiborne and the two Kleins, Anne and Calvin, have long had their garments made in Hong Kong. Ms Freis beat the local freeze-out by opening her own boutique in 1978. Since then she has built a $5 million business world-wide in the vibrant three-print, shirred waist, one-size-fits-all dresses that are her signature.

Her customers include Victoria Principal of “Dallas” television fame, the Princess of Wales and Rosalyn Carter.

Eddie Lau, who started work in a Hong Kong garment factory at the age of 11, took a collection to Lon-

don in 1978 and garnered, splashy press coverage in European fashion journals. But when he came back home his clientele was primarily the film and entertainment crowd. Only recently has the picture begun to change. In 1983 Mr Lau opened a boutique in Hong Kong and last year he was named one of the colony’s 10 outstanding young people, the only designer yet chosen. This - year he opened a second boutique at the request of Chinese Arts and Crafts, the Peking-owned department store chain that is China’s capitalist flagship in the colony. Mr Lau’s new “kai” line, exclusively in Chinese silk, is on the first floor in a prized location of the Silvercord Store. An old China hand, Pierre Cardin, is on the second floor. Although the T.D.C. has promoted Hong Kong designers in export trade shows in Paris and Dusseldorf and in occasional special promotions at Harrod’s in London or the National Retail Merchants’ Association in New York, there have been no shows to lure international fashion buyers to Hong Kong since 1979.

This year, from September 30 to October 3, the T.D.C. will host an international women’s sportswear exhibition, and Judy Mann, the chairwoman of the newly formed Hong Kong Fashion Designers’ Association (H.K.F.D.A.), said that 14 of the local designers will mount a special fashion show as part of the T.D.C. gala. “I don’t say we have to educate them (Hong Kong’s public),” said Ms Mann, who sells her designs primarily in Europe, “but we have to convince them if you appreciate good clothes you wear local designer clothes.” The designers’ up-market move, said the fashion editor of the “South China Morning Post” newspaper, Winsome Lane, was partly in response to the MultiFibre Arrangement (M.F.A.) quota restrictions forced on the colony in the 1970 s by

its export success. The MJFA. limited quantity of exports in cotton, wool, and man-made fibres. Linen, leather, silk, fur, and intricate beadwork were not restricted. Pushing the designers towards these materials, said Ms Lane, dictated higherpriced garments. In addition, Hong Kong manufacturers took the logical step of exporting more expensive goods. “The quotas specify the number of blouses, the number of dresses, but if they’re luxury, you get more for less, said Ms Lane. Mr Malig said Hong Kong’s trade development strategy now was to upgrade fabrics, increase exports to non-restricted markets such as Asia and Africa and introduce design elements that would classify garments as couture items, therefore non-restricted. Robert Footman, a Hong Kong Government official dealing with United States trade, said that 64 per cent of Hong Kong’s exports to the United States were covered by quotas at the beginning of 1983. In early 1984 that figure jumped to about 80 per cent, he said, through arrangements known as “calls” under which exports are limited on particular categories after complaints. However, the United States remains Hong Kong’s No. 1 export market, receiving 42 per cent of the colony’s total exports last year. Of the $5.6 billion Hong Kong earned through exports to the United States, clothes accounted for $2.2 billion.

Still, the United States garment and textile industry maintains its hold on 84 per cent of the total United States market, said Mr Footman. Hong Kong accounts for only 1.6 per cent of the total 16 per cent imports, with little room for growth. “If one accepts the concept of guilt (for disruption of the United States industry), which I don’t, then Hong Kong is less guilty than others,” said Mr Footman.