The End of 2008

With the end of the year round the corner, it always seems an appropriate time to look stop, rewind and see what 2008 has brought? Do you look back in retrospect and wonder what was the biggest moment of the year was and play it back in your mind step by step?

A dear friend of mine and I have a yearly ritual, on boxing day we meet up for a post Christmas lunch and discuss what we have accomplished in the past year, what were our unaccomplished intentions and then we move on the setting down what we would like the new year to bring. It takes a good 4 hours and is a draining experience but I assure you it leaves you lighter in the mind and heart.

I often forget that a year of running a fashion business, on its own seems to be the accomplishment. This would not have been possible without all the people who have shown me love and support along the way and I would just like to take a second to give them a BIG THANK YOU…

My three biggest accomplishments this year:

_Getting sponsored to go to Singapore to show my collections at Raffles City Mall during Singapore Fashion Festival
_ Being featured in Elle Magazine
_ Got my first stockest in Hong Kong at Delay No Mall (www.dnm.hk), where you can now buy Kanchan Couture

Three happenings I would like to accomplish in 2009:

_Double my revenue month on month since 2008 (at least)
_Take the collection over to Paris
_Get at least 4 more stockest internationally thus selling internationally

This Christmas one of the best gifts I was given is a book called “Tribes” by Seth Godin. I would like to leave you with an inspiring murmuring from it ending the year being inspired (for those in Hong Kong it is already 2009 as I am writing this on a plane to New York):

“Life is too short to fight the forces of change. Life is too short to hate what you do all day long. Life is too short to make mediocre stuff.”…So lets embrace the changes that 2009 creating stuff that’s amazing !!

…Bring it on 2009!!

Mellow Yellow

Being in the world of fashion I regularly like to be in-the-know for what the trends of the next season will bring and what my fellow designers are sharing with the world…more often than not, it’s quite inspiring. Recently it feels like every article I pick up talks of “Yellow” being the color that’s going to take us through 2009 and no it did not stop as being just yellow but rather a specific shade – mimosa (Named Pantone’s color of the year). In line with the depressive times, the reason being that this is the color that’s going to save us by expressing hope and reassurance like no other…

Suddenly a blurry picture conjures in my mind, of men, women, children walking the streets of New York, London, Hong Kong all dressed in Mimosa. Personally I think it would look like the world has been struck by a wave of jaundice, thus am not quite sure how this is suppose to reassure us that it is going to be alright.

At some point last year I remember another brighter shade of yellow being the “in” color, from H & M to Club Monaco to Gucci all had a range of cloths and accessories in a Sun flower yellow. One would think if they were going to choose a yellow that at least it would be this “happier” shade.

All this yellow talk had me wondering what history had to say about yellow and interestingly enough…to the ancient Greeks, yellow denoted air. Leonardo Da Vinci wrote that yellow represented earth. To the Navaho, the western mountains are yellow and bring the twilight. To the Hopi, yellow is north. In India it is the symbol of the merchant and farmer, although at one time it was considered the dress of the ascetic. For many cultures yellow is the color of hope and renewal.

By the looks of some of the fall 09 collections thankfully the world will not be dressed in Mimosa, certainly Kanchan Couture will not partake.

Today, Christmas day… I am going to leave the mellow yellow behind in exchange for a Christmas palette of red jeans, a tree green blouse and a Santa hat spreading strength, health and passion.

…Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!!

Santa's Suprise

A lovely surprise …this year it looks like Santa heard my wishes early and brought my creative soul mate and best friend back from London to surprise me. As he casually walked into the studio the neighbors heard me scream “Jeffie!!.”

We speedily caught up on the happenings of the last four months and both hungry to create something new chose a date for our next photo shoot…here we go again models, hair, make-up, lights and action!! Before we get carried away we both decided a brainstorm for concept etc was important.

My three favorite ad champagnes For the moment:




Mixing all our ideas together creating a new world, our world, a world where we have no boundaries and are free.

Planning ahead we moved on to how we would promote this shoot around Hong Kong and which magazines we would both love to be a part of. I continued to ramble on about Vogue China, Tatler etc as Jeffie excitedly started talking about our first billboard located on the escalator on Wellington Street.




I definitely owe my life to Alex, billboard maestro, a dear friend and director of TCOB Media, they are the most creative media agency around, if you saw that giant rugby ball around town during the Bledisloe cup…yep that was them. Recently they have come up with a great concept of a billboard “share” where more than one company can be displayed, this is great for the smaller companies out there who don’t have a gazillion dollar advertising budget.

Back to gossiping with Jeffie about being famous together, who we would invite to our parties and our penthouse in Paris, l’atelier in Berlin and yacht in St. Tropez.

Simply cheesy….but at the end of the hours filled with banter on love, life and London town my heart felt warm and cozy just to know that there will always be some friends whom you pick up just where you left off and that sparks of creativity and inspiration fill the room as soon as you connect….watch out, we’re brewing up a storm, Untitled Stories II, coming summer 2009!!!

Singapore Fashion Festival - Asia WOW

Asia Wow ~ An Asian fashion sensation with Raffles City

Raffles City wowed audiences with the original, indigenous creations of Asian fashion designers.
In conjunction with the Singapore Fashion Festival, which happens from 28 March to 6 April 2008, Raffles City showcased young Asian fashion talents from Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore.
The designers, Kanchan from Hong Kong (www.kanchancouture.com), Kiata Kwanda from Indonesia (www.kiatakwanda.com), Jun Escario from the Philippines (www.junescario.com) and our very own Teddy Or Beng Hua.

First Post!

Thoughts of a kooky fashionista

Do MY fashion people really live in a “creative hermetic bubble” as Simon Doonan creative director of Barneys department store in New York suggests in a recent SCMP article or, are they in sync with the depressive mood of today’s financial world?

By MY fashion people I don’t mean the multi-millionaires who perhaps have lost some small pocket change and are now thinking twice if they should buy that third pair of Louboutins, or their ninth Birkin in hot pink. Nor do I mean the Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld’s of our world, but instead I mean the small start up designers and creative’s of today who regardless of talent, dreams and inspiration still need to stay in touch with the real world to ensure the survival of the fittest.

It would be lovely indeed to not have to worry about what the next 9 months will bring and how many small businesses will carry through. But with wads of cash invested in stock which sits each day, depreciating on the shelf untouched, the depressive mood creeps through at the wee small hours of the night when one should be dreaming of the beautiful fuchsia silk brocade that could be sourced for collections to come.

If we look to the past often born out of difficult times comes great creativity. The punk movement emerged due to the alienation and recession of the 70’s, the peace movement acted as a counter culture to the war machine of 60’s America and the mod scene developed when British teenagers began to reject the "dull, timid, old-fashioned, and uninspired" British culture around them, with its repressed and class-obsessed mentality. Hence engaging with the times might not be a bad idea, it would be tragic not to be involved in being part of the creative process that goes into great revolutions.

I sit on the fence between the two worlds secretly wishing to live fully in the creative bubble but being dishearten by client’s stories about their husbands losing their jobs and that they needs to control their credit card spending otherwise would have bought that red dress or by reading how the average person has cut their Christmas spending budget by half.

I believe that being young, crazy and passionate, and having a true love for fashion and the arts alone can lead us through this time. As Peal S Buck once said “The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible and achieve it generation after generation”.

Waking up everyday I realize that it does not really matter which side I pick both perspectives have a balanced number of positives and negatives attached to them, rather it is about which experience I want to live into. For the moment all I know is that my fondness for fashion will charter me thought these uncertain times.

Money is dead…long live fashion!