The glamorous world of Mr. Tang
June 21, 2006 | 12:00am
Businessman, cultural impresario, bon vivant – just three of the many ways to describe David Tang, the famous last name behind global department-store chain Shanghai Tang.
Shanghai Tang is the place to go if you want to buy into the elegant look of Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in In the Mood for Love, the Wong Kar Wai film that got the world hot under the Mandarin collar for a new kind of Chinese style. It’s a style of hidden eroticism – of vibrantly printed cheong sams that hug every curve of a willowy figure; of impeccably cut silk suits that evoke the retro cool of the Forties and Fifties.
With his temple to modern Chinoiserie, David Tang ushered in "nostal-chic" or "Mao-chic." Shanghai Tang sells velvet Mao jackets, caps, wristwatches and place mats, People’s Liberation Army knives, sweatshirts printed with the Chinese flag, and Cultural Revolution T-shirts – most in bright neon colors with tongue firmly in chic. Part of the genius of Tang is that he created "the first recognizable Chinese brand." He succeeded in making "Made in China" fashionable.
Born in Hong Kong but schooled in Britain from age 13 up to when he became a lawyer, Tang is one of those rare figures who effortlessly straddle East and West, speaking fluent Cantonese one minute and flawless Oxbridge English the next.
He built the China Club, a hotspot for Hong Kong movers and shakers with opulent décor inspired by 1930s Shanghai. A respected art dealer who co-owns Hong Kong’s foremost modern art gallery, Hanart TZ, Tang also uses the China Club to house his huge collection of modern Chinese art. He dabbles in culture and politics (he was honorary consul for Cuba in HK), is chairman of the Pacific Cigar Co. Ltd., and owns Cigar Divan in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, a shop devoted entirely to Cuban cigars.
Often clad in a traditional, hand-tailored silk suit and puffing a huge Cuban Cohiba, Tang also collects first-edition books, plays the piano (not very well, he is the first to admit), and has met everyone from Princess Di, Oliver Stone and Richard Gere to Fidel Castro and Deng Xiaoping.
With his status as cultural icon and tastemaker, little wonder that Tang was asked by the Discovery Travel & Living channel to host Ultra Eye, a new series that tours viewers through the world’s trendiest cities and lets them meet the people who keep these metropolises on the cutting edge of design, culture and style.
Tang will host the Hong Kong episode, and guide viewers through the Peninsula Hotel plus other groundbreaking architectural wonders. The episode will premiere on Discovery Travel & Living June 29 at 9 p.m., with a replay on June 30 at 10 a.m.
We had our own sneak preview in a phone interview with David Tang himself, speaking from London, his second home after Hong Kong.
The Philippine STAR: How would you define modern Chinese style?
DAVID TANG: Let’s say we confine it to clothes first. The thing about modern Chinese fashion is that we’ve had almost a century of suspension. If you think about the turmoil that China has undergone in the 20th century, it’s not very surprising that the Chinese nation as a whole has not given much thought to sartorial elegance, starting in 1905 with the collapse of the dynastic empire for 4,000 years and then in 1911 and 1925 with the first Republic and the shedding of the Confucianism Imperial Exam System.
Then we had the Japanese invasion and the Civil War effectively between the warlords. Then of course we had the National Party against the Communist Party. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, the World War. And when the Communists were declared victors, we had Mao’s Great Leap Forward Cultural Revolution.
So during the 20th century in China, there was so much turmoil that it’s not as if we ever had time to think about fashion, so for almost 100 years, or the best part of 100 years, fashion was very secondary. And of course with the Cultural Revolution there was that mass hysteria of uniform that everybody saw and that really emphasized a dramatic change of the idea of fashion.
Fashion is supposed to be individualistic, but that Mao period brought about something which was exactly opposite. But anyway, when things calmed down and with the opening up of China, people began to relax a bit more, and now with the gradual opening of China itself and the building up of a middle class, obviously people are much more conscious.
So the answer to your question is that people are still grappling with what is the modern style of Chinese fashion today. They are hanging on to a great deal of Western fashion because that’s what’s being fed to them in the cities, at least in China. So there isn’t anything distinctive at the moment, and what I have tried to do at Shanghai Tang was really to pick up the pieces in the early 20th century and see whether we could evolve it. So I don’t think there’s any distinctive style yet, but inevitably there will be. I suspect that in about 10 or 20 years a distinctive Chinese style will emerge, but it hasn’t done so yet, I don’t think, and we’ve been effectively like a volcano in dormancy for the best part of 100 years, waiting to explode.
Is there a Chinese celebrity today who you think epitomizes modern Chinese style?
Well, I think from the Western point of view people have expressed great admiration for the artistry that one sees in Chinese films like In the Mood for Love. But there was a style which harks back to the ’50s and the ’60s and there was a distinct element of evolution, you know the collar comes really higher, the material even more sumptuous than what we found in China at the time, and so I must say I’m very drawn to all that beautiful dress in those films and I would say that in time people will start copying that sort of elegance and beauty.
But on the other hand, there will also be people wanting to look at other Chinese styles and emerging Chinese styles. We’ve had a couple of Oscar winners who are going to be dressed beautifully because they deal with incredibly artistic directors, like Wong Kar Wai, who never frames a shot without thinking about its art. So I think all of these big stars are going to help with creating a future icon for Chinese fashion.
How involved are you still in Shanghai Tang? Are you still as hands-on?
No. It’s a very, very tough job – I ran it for seven years and it is a daily affair. As you might know, I have considerable businesses outside of Shanghai Tang, and I agreed with my partner about three or four years ago that I would step down. There was a time when I thought that I could do it part-time and remain part of the management, but it was very clear to me soon afterwards that that was not something that was fair to management. You’re either hands-on or you’re not in a business like the fashion business, where you have to be thinking about the next collection, the next thing you’re going to do every day, and so if I were to just blitz in and blitz out that would not be fair to the team who works daily. So I’m very conscious of the management style and I therefore decided to not have anything more to do with the management.
I have to say I like some stuff and I don’t like some stuff, but overall Shanghai Tang is now flourishing, we’ve got 20 shops, I think, and we’re making very good money, and so we’ve made an impact. Whenever I’m in Europe, for example, I see a great many people wearing Shanghai Tang clothes, and I’m extremely gratified with that and I hope that more Orientals will wear our clothes.
Where are the best places to shop and dine in Hong Kong right now?
I’m afraid I still go to Temple Street and I still go to Lady Street. I still like to go to Mongkok and I like to go to all the places where there are individual shops and there are individual people and artisans and artists and craftsmen who, in their own way, have learned a trade which they value and which I, one day, will pass on to the next generation. I like that idea of historical continuation and I like the idea of people taking pride in what they do on a small scale. I do not like going off to shop in any shopping mall, and I was devastated when I knew, and I see now, a huge shopping mall in Mongkok, which traditionally has been a place where I much enjoyed seeing all the little shops, beautifully lit up at night, with enterprising people working overtime and taking pride in what they do. Nowadays, there’s all these huge malls – I don’t go to any of them. I will always go for street stores or small shops than a bunch together.
If you could throw the dinner party of your dreams, who would your guests be, living or dead?
Well, I’d have five beautiful women and perhaps four men. There are many beautiful women I would like to have met or to meet. I think living now would be Natalie Portman, and probably Mia Farrow. I mean, she was very beautiful, but Mia Farrow is an extraordinary woman, somebody having married Frank Sinatra, Andre Previn, and Woody Allen, and having adopted about 15 children. She is somebody that I’d really like to know much more. Then I would certainly have loved to have met Brigitte Bardot when she was 21. I think she was an absolute cracker; sex on wheels. I think Raquel Welch when she did that film 100 Million B.C., it can knock you back 100 million miles. She was a real knockout. I think Madame Curie, because she was a huge intellectual and became the first woman to lead in the field of science that was absolutely dominated by men. She was rather ugly, but nonetheless, she would bring some intellectual conversations to the table.
As for the men, I would certainly love to have got into the mind of Hitler, and there was nobody wittier than Churchill, and I think I would like to have both of them. I think also Einstein, who I think was an extraordinary mind and actually turned upside down our preconceptions of physics in the last century. And of course I would have to bring in three of the greatest artists of all time – in any art really, but they happen to be the same – they’re the composers Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven. Their artistry is just so monumental.
You were educated in the United Kingdom. What do you feel is most Chinese about you?
I come to London a bit, but I live in Hong Kong. I don’t live in London. I dream in Chinese, I wear Chinese clothes, and I do everything with a wish to bring a Chinese element to it. No, I’m very Chinese in my outlook and my sensibilities. I might be physically outside of China, but I am quintessentially Chinese, there’s no question. I feel it in my bones.
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