Designer Khieng Puong’s (方國強) designs for the new uniforms of Far Eastern Air Transport’s (FAT) flight attendants, which debuted on the company’s first official domestic flight on April 18 after the company fell into financial troubles in 2008, have earned him a lot of media attention.
Founder of the Khieng Atelier brand, Cambodia-born Puong worked under the famous French designer Emanuel Ungaro for 12 years, holding at one point the position of chief designer of accessories at Ungaro. Puong later married Wang Jui-jung (王瑞容), daughter of late Taiwanese tycoon Wang Yung-ching (王永慶).
Puong demonstrated complete mastery of FAT’s characteristic gray-and-red color theme and used it to design a suit that capitalizes on the contrast of metallic gray and eastern-red. To that, he added gray stockings on red-colored BESO high heels, a brand and style popularized by the popular TV show The Fierce Wife (犀利人妻).
Photo: Chien Jung-fung, Taipei Times
Another highly visible uniform designed by Puong is the orange-and-white suit for Taiwan Mobile Co. The fake two-piece vest and shirt with a miniskirt, combined with the sweet cellphone-savvy schoolgirl style used in the company’s cellphone ads, sought to give customers a feeling of refreshment and friendliness.
Puong has also designed uniforms for staff at the W Hotel in Taipei and Hotel One in Greater Taichung.
Although the all-black uniform that the W Hotel staff wear looks simple, Puong said it brought out the spirit of the hotel’s service, which he defined as “handling all matters for the traveler as efficiently and imperceptibly as possible, but also respecting the traveler’s personal space.”
Skilled at and famous for making “one-of-a-kind” uniforms, Puong sees himself as the “promoter of corporations” as he designs uniforms for every type of person according to their style and figure, thus making it possible for them to go to work looking their very best.
While people have an almost fanatical attraction to “beautiful women in uniform,” Puong has taken the imagination to a whole new level, making high-class custom-tailored clothing itself the object of beauty.
For him, the spirit of uniforms should be summed up in one word: wow — adding that he disagreed with the view that uniforms are synonymous with rigidity.
“A successful uniform should make its owner want to wear it when she goes shopping,” Puong said.
When Puong came to Taiwan with his wife in 1999, he didn’t understand a word of Mandarin and had to communicate with his father-in-law, who spoke Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese), using Teochew — which are closely related — which often ended with both sides not completely understanding each other.
Puong can now communicate with customers in Taiwan with ease and his products have become very popular amongst corporate businessmen’s wives and the wealthy.
Taiwan is now capable of making excellent quality custom-made clothing, he said, but in terms of corporate uniforms, it has yet to find the unique “spirit.”
Using high-quality custom-made clothes, Puong hopes to polish the image of Taiwanese corporations and, in so doing, raise the quality of their service.
TRANSLATED BY JAKE CHUNG, STAFF WRITER
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not