The Gucci Killers

The winds of fashion seem to be blowing in Shanghai Tang's direction, too. By one estimate, in a decade, as many Americans will be visiting China as will travel to Europe. And just as, 20 years ago, Americans brought back a taste for things French and Italian from trips abroad, now they're likely to embrace the next cool thing: Asian chic. "Asian fusion is the top of the style wave," says Michael Silverstein, global practice area leader of the Boston Consulting Group and coauthor of Trading Up: The New American Luxury. "Design is flowing across markets." That puts Shanghai Tang in a fashion sweet spot. Much as Ralph Lauren, a garmento from the Bronx, created a brand translating the look of the landed gentry into fashion and decor that could look at home from Shaker Heights to Pacific Palisades, so too does this company aspire to be the bridge between East and West. (It helps that it's majority-owned by Richemont, a Swiss-based luxury-brands holding company.) "What Shanghai Tang does is translate two cultures," says le Masne de Chermont.

Until now, Shanghai Tang has been proceeding cautiously, focusing first on satisfying the growing Chinese demand for prestigious labels at home, with five stores in Hong Kong and four on the Mainland (plus 10 outposts in places such as Paris, London, and Bangkok). But now it's embarking on an ambitious expansion plan that will see it launching five stores a year in the world's toniest markets. As it emerges on the world stage, though, it must pull off a delicate balancing act: It has to create a look that's both Chinese and international, authentic and sophisticated enough for a global audience. Too much Asian kitsch, and it's dead.

Shanghai Tang's flagship store in Hong Kong's Central District reveals a delicate balancing act: Tang has to create a look that's both culturally authentic and sophisticated.

It's a hazard le Masne de Chermont, 42, knows all too well. Walking through the company's flagship store on Pedder Street in Hong Kong's Central District, he points out the range of merchandise. Sure, there are rows of colorful qi paos, those Suzie Wong dresses so beloved by Hong Kong tourists, and silk-lined velvet "Tang" Mao jackets for men, so decadent they could get you exiled to a rice paddy for a reeducation in proletarian values. But, he says, most of the clothes show their Chinese heritage with far more subtle touches. Men's shirts are made from striped and plaid fabric that would be at home in Brooks Brothers but sport mandarin collars or knotted buttons that hint at their more exotic pedigree.

The women's line features cashmere cable-knit fishermen sweaters lined with Chinese-patterned silk. Other garments wear their parentage more boldly, with luxurious touches such as peony-bedecked brocade, braid twisted into eternity knots, and beaded dragon designs, or with cheeky riffs on Chinese history such as buttons featuring tiny pictures of the late Dowager Empress Cixi.

It's no surprise, says le Masne de Chermont, that the company's principals have been recruited from the carpetbagging global creative class. The brand's founder, British-educated David Tang, is from Hong Kong, that most Western of Chinese cities. Ooi is American; Camilla Hammar, the marketing director, is Swedish. Le Masne de Chermont, who is French, honed his luxury branding skills at Piaget before being deployed by Richemont, whose portfolio also includes Mont Blanc, Chloe, Dunhill, and Cartier, to fix its ailing Shanghai Tang brand.

"We're a melting pot of multicultural people who work on the same vision: a Chinese lifestyle brand that's relevant," he says. As for native Chinese, he says, they're starting to understand branding and sophistication, too. "They are so eager to learn, you cannot imagine."

Learning is a skill much prized in the Richemont organization. "You can make a mistake," Johann Rupert, the company's South African chairman, told le Masne de Chermont, "but you can't make it twice." Shanghai Tang sorely needed that indulgence in 1999, after it had to shutter its glitzy, 12,000-square-foot showplace on Madison Avenue when sales of qi paos and Mao watches couldn't keep pace with Manhattan rents.

David Tang, son of a wealthy Chinese businessman, launched the brand in 1994 in Hong Kong as a custom-tailoring business, marshaling the talents of Shanghainese tailors who had fled Communist China in 1949. In 1996, anticipating a robust market selling Chinese souvenirs to well-heeled tourists attracted by the handover of the city from the British in 1997, he expanded into ready-to-wear. On November 21, 1997, Tang, who had already succeeded in selling the lion's share of the company to Richemont, was ready to colonize New York. At precisely 6:18 p.m.--a time chosen by his feng shui master--he threw open the doors of his palace on a posh stretch of Madison Avenue just across the street from Barneys, welcoming the city's glitterati for a bash that featured roast suckling pig, lion dancers, and Fergie, the Duchess of York. It was such a hot ticket that many partygoers were stuck outside in the rain as the NYPD, citing the city's tough fire codes, turned people away at the door.