Adding class to qual­ity

Er­dos is a house­hold name when it comes to cash­mere. But it is now turn­ing trendy as it tar­gets a younger and more fash­ion-con­scious de­mo­graphic. Sun Yuan­qing re­ports.

China Daily (USA) - - LIFE - Con­tact the writer at sun­yuan­qing@ chi­nadaily.com.cn

to cater to the In­ter­net gen­er­a­tion.

And Wang hopes that all these moves will cover all the ma­jor cus­tomer groups in­China.

Wang, whogrewup in­Or­dos in the In­ner Mon­go­lia au­ton­o­mous re­gion, was sent to Bri­tain to study at the age of 15.

She later went to Cam­bridge to study engi­neer­ing where she ac­quired a mas­ter’s de­gree.

Af­ter grad­u­a­tion, she worked for the con­sul­tancy firm Roland Berger, where she learned about busi­ness man­age­ment.

In 2006, she left Roland Berger to join the fam­ily busi­ness, launch­ing the 1436 brand as she felt Chi­nese cash­mere was un­der­val­ued.

“We had the best ma­te­rial and the best tech­nique, but we didn’t have a good brand. I wanted peo­ple to know about the value of cash­mere,” says Wang, whose pre­vi­ous work ex­pe­ri­ence let her tap in­ter­na­tional re­sources at a time when Chi­nese fash­ion brands were just start­ing to be rec­og­nized.

The Er­dos Group now has French de­signer Gilles Du­four, who worked with Karl Lager­feld in Chanel for more than a decade, as its cre­ative di­rec­tor.

And the ap­point­ment of supermodel Liu as the com­pany’s spokeswom­an­nowmeans the com­pany has a much more re­lat­able brand im­age for young peo­ple.

The com­pany has also re­cently reached agree­ments with an Ital­ian de­signer to head the Er­dos 1980 line, but Wang would not re­veal the name.

The Er­dos Group is also seek­ing to col­lab­o­rate with emerg­ing Chi­nese de­sign­ers.

A cap­sule col­lec­tion done with China’s lead­ing in­de­pen­dent de­signer Uma Wang will be shown at Shang­hai Fash­ion Week later this month. Renowned Chi­nese pian­ist Wang Yu­jia, who is also a spokes­woman for Swiss lux­ury watch­maker Rolex, re­cently per­formed at the Na­tional Cen­ter for the Per­form­ing Arts, pre­sent­ing works by Alexan­der Scri­abin, Chopin and Beethoven. Rolex has long been a pa­tron of artists and mu­si­cians, in­clud­ing Placido Domingo and Ce­cilia Bar­toli. Bei­jing Caibai Store re­cently launched a new­col­lec­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with di­a­mond brand Forever­mark. The col­lec­tion com­prises rings, ear­rings and neck­laces high­light­ing the four-leaf clover. Ac­tor Zheng Kai at­tended the event. The col­lec­tion marks the 60th an­niver­sary of the store, and a se­ries of pro­mo­tion are avail­able.

Wang Zhen (left), vice-pres­i­dent of the Er­dos Group, and ac­tress Zhang Ziyi at the Bei­jing show.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from China

© PressReader. All rights reserved.