A cut above

Liu Qingyang designs and manages her own clothes for her Beijing boutique Chictopia. Photos Provided to China Daily

UK-educated Liu is one of new breed of fashion designers

An ankle-length dress with suspenders and prominent prints of teapots in different colors and shapes on display in the window of a store called Chictopia. Streams of women visiting Nanluoguxiang, one of Beijing's traditional alleyways, stop to stare at the dress and discuss its bold and arresting design.

Liu Qingyang, the boutique's designer and owner, arrives later, bringing with her more funky and bold clothing for the coming season. The store soon gets crowded as more people pack in for a look. The whimsical dress that catches the eyes of many passers-by is one of Liu's 50 fresh works for the fall and winter of 2012.

"The new collection is named 'Porcelain Dolls', as I believe that every woman still has a little girl in her, and the idea of the doll conveys the status of being a woman and yet still a girl," Liu says.

While Western luxury names are opening more stores in the Chinese market, a breed of homegrown and internationally educated designers are emerging, pursed by some Chinese consumers who desire something different. Beijing-born, Hong Kong-raised, UK-educated Liu, who is also known as Christine Lau, is part of the ranks.

In 2009, Liu founded Chictopia, a boutique she says symbolizes the ideal world of the designer. Her work was soon being showcased and sold on thecorner.com.cn's Vogue Talents Corner, which was launched by Italian Internet mail-order retailer Yoox in 2008.

Chictopia, which boasts high-profile fans like actress Fan Bingbing, graced the cover of Vogue China earlier this year, a first for a homegrown independent Chinese brand.

Huang Hung, the entrepreneurial CEO of China Interactive Media Group who also runs fashion magazine iLook, picked Liu as one of her top five Chinese design talents.

"Her stuff just flies off the rack. She does pretty so well; pretty, feminine, young and at very reasonable prices," Huang said in an earlier interview with The Business of Fashion website.

However, Liu says the path she took from student to independent designer was not easy.

She majored in textile design at London's Saint Martins College of Art and Design, where she realized that her interest and talent lay in costume design.

In 2006, during her time in college, Liu took part in the global textile fair Premiere Vision with a fashion designer, where she sold four of her designs and made a profit of 1,200 euros ($1,540).

Later, she worked as a freelancer and sold five of her designs, the two experiences giving her some confidence in her costume-design capabilities.

Liu says that skin is to people as textiles are to clothes. "They can directly express my design concepts as the variation of fabrics is great," she says.

"My design is more represented by colors and printings. I have done insect collections and also animal collections; I think my works have bright characteristics and easily make people different from others."

She says she liked London a lot, but had never thought of staying there or starting her business there. When it was time to graduate, the only thing in her mind was that she must have her own brand.

Betting on the potential of the Chinese market and the idea that registering a brand in China was much cheaper than in Britain, she came back home.

But in her first year back in China, she knew nothing about how to make clothes. She found two tailors to teach her how to sew and make samples.

Fortunately, as she began to learn drawing when she was five, drawing and designing came very easily to her.

"At first, I had no idea of what clothes I should make, no one knew the brand and very few people understood the concept of an independent designer," Liu says.

The 27-year-old says that although she is now able to sell more than 1,000 pieces of clothing every season, she lost nearly 300,000 yuan ($47,600 or 36,700 euros) in Chictopia's first year.

"I was so blind and just made batches of clothes without my characteristics. I just thought that I had to make some affordable and popular clothes that were appreciated by most of the consumers. The price was about 400 yuan to 500 yuan," she says, explaining that she had a lot of leftover stock in 2009.

Liu realized that she had to change course and make something that she really wanted instead of merely catering to the mass market like the majority of other brands.

When one of her friends told her that Huang Hung's magazine iLook was planning to open a multi-brand boutique store called Brand New China, she sent her work to the magazine and began to see her brand steadily growing in popularity.

"The situation was much better after my brand joined BNC, a platform designed to encourage high quality, independent Chinese fashion," Liu says.

Right now, her works are not only sold in her own store and BNC, but also in famous boutique stores in Beijing and Shanghai such as Dong Liang, which features the work of independent designers, and Internet retailers such as ELLEshop and thecorner.com.cn.

Liu says that her usual buyers include people working in the art industry and those who have lived abroad between the ages of 20 and 35.

One of her new dresses is priced at 2,980 yuan, and she says she positioned her brand to be affordable instead of as a luxury line.

Each season, her production increases by 40 percent to 50 percent, and Liu is looking to transition from her small workshop into the operations of a normal company.

"I hope more people will wear my clothes, and I believe that the whimsical, retro-inspired totems to femininity can be accepted by more consumers," Liu says.

But she also says that she will stick to her own style instead of adjusting her designs to cater to the whims of the market.

"I think Chinese fashion designers are a lucky group as more and more people are paying attention to them and the Chinese market has a lot of potential. Although our design and price are competitive in the market, the biggest challenges for us are business management and marketing because we lack the experience," Liu says.

Currently, she has a workshop in Beijing with five sample-dress makers and an assistant. Liu is in charge of design and spends most of her time in the quiet workspace in the suburbs of Beijing.

"I have to deal with a lot of problems in a day, including sewing, pattern-making, sketching, ordering fabrics, lending media clothes, etc," Liu says.

But she says she enjoys the status of combining her work with family life.

"I never feel tired with my work, and the most exciting moment is when I finish a sample and try it on myself," says Liu, who wears a dress printed with pictures of rabbits, a pair of red high heels and a vintage straw bag.

As for the designs, most of her inspiration comes from her daily life. The idea of the porcelain-doll collection came to her when she saw a friend's sister who could not live without her doll.

"Even when we were eating outside, she ordered a small seat for the doll," Liu says.

In the future, she hopes to expand her store into a lifestyle boutique, selling clothes and also other interior decorations.

"The store will emphasize my special fabric print," Liu says.

She shares her workshop with four cats.

"Two of them are stray cats. When I came across them, they were nearly dead, and then I brought them home."

yaojing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/28/2012 page28)