The Gucci Killers

Then she hit on an idea: Each collection would reflect a China-related theme. "I decided it was really, really imperative to create cultural roots for every single product," she says. The fall/winter 2003 collection, inspired by the traditional costumes of a Chinese minority group called the Miao, came first. It sold better than the previous two collections. A strategy was born.

Ooi now roams China, visiting antique markets, art galleries, museums, and historic sites, making notes, sketches, and lists. "If I lost my notebook, I would be lobotomized," she says. She reads voraciously in Chinese history and stays in tune with Chinese pop culture. Then, twice a year, she defines a theme for the next season's collection and emails a brief on the concept to 16 designers and consultants scattered around the world. It will specify the collection's intellectual underpinnings and suggest various elements that should be incorporated into the season's designs. The theme of the fall/winter 2005 collection, for example, was Beijng's Forbidden City, the former imperial seat. Design motifs included elements such as symbols from the emperors' robes--the sun, the moon, the five-clawed dragon, the color yellow--and embellishments fit for an imperial court--brocade, jade, lapis, and fur.

While the garments are luxurious, Ooi also has a strict standard for their wearability. "Every item should transport the wearer mentally to someplace exotic in terms of time and region," says the Buckeye girl, dressed in well-worn denim for breakfast at Hong Kong's posh Mandarin Oriental hotel. "But it's also important that every piece we make is able to be worn with a pair of jeans. If it can't be, we're not succeeding. That's the nature of modern dressing."

Once the brief has been distributed, Ooi runs the creative process like a circus ringmaster, gathering sketches from designers in Paris, London, New York, and China, and sending them out across the network. "I allow the designers to pollinate themselves," she says. Ooi's job is to distill, disseminate, and then unify. "The trick is to make it look like it all came from the same person," she says. Given multiple time zones, nationalities, and egos, it's a 24-7 job, keeping her on the phone and email long after she has tucked her 6-year-old son, Sam, into bed.

The theme for the spring/summer 2006 collection: contemporary Chinese art. Ooi commissioned well-known Chinese artists to create designs and, in turn, asked students at China's most prestigious art academy to create artworks based on fabrics from the collection. She's currently gathering ideas for a collection based on Shanghai in the 1930s, the period when the city was known variously as either the Pearl of the Orient--or the Whore of the East.

Early signs are that the strategy is working. While the privately held Richemont is cagey about divulging numbers, le Masne de Chermont says that the Madison Avenue's store's revenue is up 50% in 2005. Overall, Tang grew 40% last year, mostly in Asia, home to 70% of its stores. And it's profitable, though not quite yet in the United States.

But while le Masne de Chermont has plans to roll out additional U.S. shops, he's not as obsessed as his predecessor was with making it in America. The red-hot future of his business, he points out, is in Asia. "Can you imagine 1 billion Chinese getting into capitalism?" he says with undisguised glee. "It's unstoppable!"

Linda Tischler (ltischler@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer.