Tailored for tots

Babin and Peraud have embroidered the enchanting details they see in China into their design.

The brand name Tang' Roulou comes from the Chinese snack tanghulu, which reminded the French pair of the candy pommes d'amour. Photos Provided to China Daily

Inspired by Chinese culture and their own background in France, Pierre-Yves Babin and Amelie Peraud have crossed cultural lines to create a growing business making children's clothes

Chinese culture has become a growing feature in the Western world over the last decade, and in return European, American and other influences now abound in the major cities of China. Less common is a fusion between cultures as seen in the handmade children's clothes designed by Pierre-Yves Babin and Amelie Peraud. The French business partners, in their 30s, are the brains behind the children's clothing brand Tang' Roulou, which mixes Chinese and European elements into its design. They operate from a 45-square meter workshop in downtown Beijing, which contains space for themselves, two assistants and two tailors.

The space is small and limits the size of orders the company can produce over a short period. If large and rapid orders come through, they outsource to other tailors.

The shelves are stacked with patterned and colored cloth, which they search through to show examples of their design - a plum chasuble dress sewn with handmade bubbles, a pink jacket with traditional Chinese buttons, a red sleeping bag for newly born babies, a blue star that can be used as a cushion or hung on the wall as decoration, and a foldable mattress, also for babies.

The cut, shape, color and decorations of their designs are cute, delicate and hold meaning.

"I got the inspiration for this chasuble dress sewn with little cushions from the Forbidden City," Peraud says. "When I was a French teacher, I passed by the Forbidden City each day. I liked the golden doornails on the big doors, so when I designed this dress, I put the little cushions in different colors onto it and this works also like a joke."

Babin and Peraud are not married and do not have children. Their business started in 2004 when one of Peraud's friends became pregnant and she decided to give her a special gift.

"I wanted to make some very personal presents for them," she says. "At that time, I was in my second year in China. I wanted to connect my presents with my life in China. Then I started to design some blankets."

Peraud's friend loved the blankets and encouraged by this she found an empty space near the Drum and Bell Towers in Beijing to open Tang' Roulou's first shop.

In 2007 Peraud met Babin through friends. He had been in China for three-and-a half years, doing a variety of jobs, including teaching French at Hainan University. The two became friends and this blossomed into a business partnership.

Their first job as partners was to design a logo for the Tang' Roulou brand. Tanghulu is a traditional Chinese snack most commonly found in Beijing and Tianjin. Traditionally, it consists of candied Chinese hawthorns on a bamboo skewer, and tastes both sweet and tart.

When Babin and Peraud saw tanghulu, it reminded them of pommes d'amour, French for apples of love, candy covered apples eaten at Halloween and known as toffee apples or candy apples in other countries.

"When I see tanghulu, I see a lot of small apples of love put together," Peraud says, "which connects Chinese culture with French culture. It's so nice. But we change the spelling of tanghulu based on French pronunciation into Tang' Roulou."

Chinese and French culture run through their work. Babin takes out a red Chinese tunic called Yangguifei, the name of one of the Four Beauties of ancient China, the concubine of an emperor in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). She explains that this is the most traditional item among their work, but that normally their designs incorporate both strong Chinese and French elements, giving them a look that is both modern and traditional.

Neither Babin nor Peraud is a trained designer. Peraud grew up in the suburbs of Paris, not far from Louis XIV's palace Versailles, and studied publishing and advertising at university.

Babin is from the west of France and had no involvement in design until 2003 when he worked for a gallery showing Chinese art.

"When I first came to China, I spent two months traveling in western China, including Sichuan and Gansu provinces," Peraud says. "I could not speak Chinese at that time. It's a very exotic experience and people were very nice.

"It's like living in China: you see details that you love and later, you think about those details and want to express them in your own ways. Maybe this is what we do with Tang' Roulou."

Two years after Babin joined, they moved their shop in Gulou to new premises in the trendy Sanlitun area of Beijing in 2010.

Tang' Roulou's customers are both Chinese and from overseas, Peraud says.

"Chinese culture is a very strong culture," she says. "For Europeans, it is very exotic but also very delicate. So when we add Chinese elements to our designs, foreigners often like it since they cannot find similar products in other stores."

Chinese customers are surprised to find two French people selling such Chinese designs.

"Often, they say it's strange that foreign designers employ so many Chinese elements in their work but Chinese designers do not. And some others say their mother and grandmother used to do this and they are very nice," she says.

Neither Babin nor Peraud does the sewing. They draw inspiration from daily life and travel, and employ others to turn their ideas into reality.

Rather than plastic or metal buttons, they use traditional Chinese patterned cloth ones, called hulu buttons, which give their designs a delicate and elegant feel. They also invent unusual ways to use traditional materials.

"I think our special characteristics are that our products are full of surprises and you can use them in many different ways," Peraud says.

One product is a notebook with sewn covers embroidered with an abstract tiger in a Chinese style and the Chinese character fu, which means luck. The notebook's bookmark is made from a cloth button.

"You see there is a fu and a hulu button that also means luck (because the pronunciation is similar to that of fu)," Peraud says.

"We put these two auspicious symbols together and this notebook carries a strong meaning of luck. If you give it to a friend, it will be a very great present."

The French style of Peraud and Babin comes out particularly strongly in their use of color and patterns that remind them of French movies, she says.

French humor is also a part of the names of some designs. For example, they have a velvet tunic called Pilipala, which is supposed to represent the sound of crackers or raindrops on a roof.

A traditional qipao dress is named Shanghai because Peraud says the shape and style remind her of Shanghai singers in the 1930s.

And a padded jacket named after Kunming, the capital of Southwest China's Yunnan province, is for girls to wear in spring and autumn because Kunming is warm all year round.

Now, besides their Beijing stores, they also have a dealer selling their designs in Shanghai and an online shop.

"We are a very small company and we have to do almost everything by ourselves," Babin says. "The business is growing, but slowly, and I hope we can expand production in the future."

Peraud says her dream is to keep the business going and spend more time in the countryside looking for inspiration in China's craftwork.

yangyangs@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 01/11/2013 page29)