I stopped by D-Mop’s flagship store in Causeway Bay last week and stumbled upon an exhibition they have for the new Y-3 / Hacienda collaboration. For those who don’t know, the Hacienda was a groundbreaking club in Manchester, England that served as a melting pot and catalyst for music crucial to the eighties and nineties.

At one point in time it was considered the most famous club in the world and boasted legendary lines to get in. The Hacienda was partially financed by the group New Order, whose mixture of live instruments integrated with electronic sounds greatly influenced today’s music. As the exhibition notes, somewhat humorously, the Hacienda made history, but didn’t make money! (more…)

First of all, this isn’t the kind of ice cream that you eat! Ice Cream is a high fashion sneaker brand launched by Pharrell Williams (of the illustrious Neptunes,) along with Nigo of A Bathing Ape. Billionaire Boys Club is the street wear clothing collaboration between the two.

I walked past On Lan Street last night and saw the new BBC Ice Cream flagship store. It sort of snuck up on me in the middle of the block! The entire edifice of the building has been transformed into a rocket ship (one of the popular icons of the brand.) The sliding doors were working and the place was obviously undergoing some last minute tweaks before it opens on Saturday, September 15th.

This will be Billionaire Boys Club / Ice Cream’s second store, the other is located in Tokyo. My friend Sylvia ran into Pharrell last year while he was in town looking for potential locations. On Lan Street was a good choice. The small street has gone crazy recently with a Martin Margiela, Comme Des Garcons, Yasuhiro Mihara, a new Diesel shop, and a Visvim store just around the corner. The street was pioneered for high-end fashion by D-Mop and Deep Anger (currently located in Causeway Bay). The BBC / Ice Cream shop, should add a more youthful edge to On Lan Street.

Here are two more photos… (more…)

D-mop, one of Hong Kong’s hippest fashion retail chains launched a cross-branded phone with Nokia on Wednesday night. The event was held at their flagship shop on 8 Kingston Street in Causeway Bay.

“Crossovers,” as they are commonly referred to, are essentially double, or sometimes triple branded products. Crossovers are often written about in the abbreviated form: Somebrand x Somebrand, with an ‘x’ in the middle. At one point two years ago, you could barely turn a page in a local fashion magazine without seeing some sort of crossover being touted. In Hong Kong, even mainstream businesses such as McDonald’s got into the act, adapting the advertising technique for their own limited edition items. (more…)

Let me start off by saying that I love D-Mop’s events. For a little background info, D-Mop is a high-end retail chain with locations in several of Hong Kong’s top shopping centers. In addition they have two large flagship shops in Central and Causeway Bay - Hong Kong’s major shopping meccas - which are a magnet for local celebrities. Friday night they held an event for Japanese designer Mihara Yasuhiro. Mihara designs an upscale line for Puma and just put out a limited edition book to commemorate his new line.

The crowd found at D-Mop’s events echoes the clothing they specialize in - upscale, creative and funky. This is a big difference from say, a Gucci or LV party, where the crowd isn’t nearly as charismatic. There’s always a quality, rather than quantity aspect to their events. Friday night’s party was filled with people sporting unique looks. Unfortunately, I was so busy talking, I didn’t take any crowd shots! For a peek at more sneakers by Mihara Yasuhiro… (more…)

I recently attended the opening of Maison Margiela - clothing designer Martin Margiela’s first shop in Hong Kong. The location is On Lan Street, Central - also home to high-end retailer D-MOP and the Deep Anger store. The shop occupies a very unique building.

Maison Margiela is housed in an old stone low-rise. There are very few old buildings of this type left in Hong Kong. Particularly rare are stone buildings from the early 1900’s. Nearly all of them are gone. Due to the scarcity of land, smaller buildings have been razed to make way for skyscrapers - a trend that happened in Central decades ago.

The interior of the shop is completely white. Everything is covered in white colored paint. The monotone environment of the interior helps the clothes on the rack to standout even more.

Click on the photo below to see a larger view of the building exterior.

My friend Rocky, part of the D-MOP family, invited me to attend the Y-3 event. Y-3 is the fashion partnership launched between Yohji Yamamoto and Adidas. D-MOP is the key retailer of Y-3 in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The night of the show I jumped into a taxi and made my way over to Kowloon-side towards the old airport. The taxi driver didn’t know exactly where it was, so we took a few wrong turns before reaching our final destination - a huge warehouse structure in a remote industrial part of Kowloon Bay.

Once I walked through the narrow, maze-like entrance, the space opened up to an enormous room with three-story high ceilings. A large stage had been built to accommodate a long catwalk backed by a deep area consisting of props and a sunken d.j. booth. It was obvious from the second I walked in that this would be a good party!

The props had a sort of winter feel, with stark, leaf-less trees and life-sized ravens perched around the stage. It was a little eerie!

The clothes themselves were stark as well. The almost wedding-like dresses and dark black clothes carried out the theme. Several of my friends were in the show including Japanese models Yuya and Ren. A set of Taiwanese twins were featured as well. (Click on the photos below to see larger versions of two of these images)

Normally, a large percentage of guests will depart shortly after the show. Not the case with this event! The party afterwards was packed and raging for long after the show ended. Abundant free alcohol and a cool setting contributed. At one point, the entire stage was boarded by party-goers, and the party kicked into full swing. It was one of the better events in recent memory.

Last week Nike held an event to coincide with their new ‘Joga Bonito’ campaign. ‘Joga Bonito’ means ‘play beautiful’ in Portuguese, relating to Ronaldo, one of the top Brasilian soccer players. To kick-off the advertising blitz, Nike threw an event at the DMOP shop in Causeway Bay. (DMOP is one the high-end retail chains in Hong Kong.)

There were several installations of artwork and merchandise related to the campaign, including photographs, toy figures and jerseys on display. They also had two special ‘Joga Bonito’ themed foosball tables for people to play.

Here’s a photo of Nike’s street advertising campaign for ‘Joga Bonito’ in Causeway Bay that I took later that night.