Wherever you go in Taipei, casual is king and even senior government ministers leave the tie behind and turn up for events in slacks, a shirt and sports jacket.
On the street, this attitude is even more pronounced. Distressed is best and street-style rules. Though young people are shopping for labels it's not usually Gucci or Louis Vuitton (LV) but alternative brands such as Energie, A Bathing Ape, Fat, Stussy and Karl Kani.
Local designers like the up-and-coming Destroy are also getting in on the action.
As the number and range of native, Japanese, US and English style magazines attest, fashion is taken seriously by the "strawberry generation" in Taiwan and the main focus is on international styles.
Also, as the growth in the number of fashion outlets indicates, youngsters are buying more clothes than ever before.
Wang Xin-kai (王信凱), 23, and his girlfriend Zhang Yan-chi (張硯淇), 22, were walking around the department store and boutique center of Xinyi District last week. He was in Bathing Ape from his hat down to his denim pants and wore a pair of Nike skateboard-style sneakers. She wore Agnes B, Diesel jeans and All Star shoes. The toy store workers said they spent around NT$10,000 to NT$12,000 a month on clothes.
They said they didn't buy non-brand stuff any more because their friends would joke about it and they would lose face. Asked if they would go out with someone who was not well dressed, she said, "It does matter a little how someone is dressed. If he was dressed strangely I wouldn't go out with him."
He said, "We have money so fashion is important and it's good to have decent-looking clothes to walk around in ... I prefer clothes that are comfortable and have a relaxed mood. Also it affects me if someone I admire is a representative for a label. I will consider buying those clothes."
Lin Jung-chung (林榮春), who calls himself Funky Dog, started his label Taki a year ago and also works at the Bathing Ape store on Kaifeng Street, in Ximending. LV wasn't on young people's shopping lists because it wasn't casual, he said. And the trend toward street fashion and smaller labels wasn't going to change soon.
"Bathing Ape is the best at marketing, that's why it's the market leader."
Lin said over the last 13 years Bathing Ape has become a big name that has retained a cool edge. It uses variants on its name to keep the brand fresh, introduces limited editions and keeps its products reasonably inaccessible to most shoppers, by selling at a premium to style leaders who know where to find it.
The entrance to the store is understated. Inside it's spare and expensive with sweaters from NT$7,000 to NT$10,000, T-shirts are NT$1,500 up. The atmosphere is cultivated cool though its street connections to graffiti and hip hop are obvious.
Lin said he sees his clothes as objects of wearable art. He said the influences behind his label were Japanese ("taki" means waterfall) and Daoist. He comes up with brightly colored designs that bleed and clash at the edges, and adds bling to hats. He has the T-shirts made in Japan because he likes the tailoring and the quality of the cotton that makes them softer.
As for taike, which has ripened over the past year into a cultural phenomenon celebrating Taiwaneseness and an anti-style sensibility, Lin said it was not so important in the fashion world.
RSS