plan b: butterflies or bananas.
Here is your Daily Single's Horoscope for Saturday, November 27
Starting something fresh and new is definitely favored, and other people are likely to appreciate your amazing charm even more than usual today. It's a great time for your love life!
you see, when people tell you not to put all of your eggs into one basket, generally, they mean for you to do some other hackneyed thing like "play the field" or "enjoy being single," but i decided to ward off feeling from coming too quickly and too strongly by simply making myself vulnerable to feelings i once had in the past. but, hey, it's got me writing, and that's something, because otherwise, i'd find myself sitting here freaking out over misinterpreted text messages and half signals instead of taking my own advice and walking into this situation with eyes wide open and addressing the possibilities like an adult. what, you may ask, am i talking about? well, i've met someone. someone who has the potential to replace the exsomeone. it takes me a while to meet someone. seriously. and it's an odd thing for me to meet someone who likes me with anywhere near the same intensity that i like them. can i find someone to have sex with? certainly. i think it's a fascination fuck for some. for others, it's the idea that they're being really bad by being with me. they're "acting out" and they know it. i'm one of those types of freaks. i'm that girl in the bar with her fuck me pumps. they're valentinos most times, or lately, ysl. so, as of my last post, i had some doubts about the realness of this thing. the truth. the re-schedule of the first date freaked me out to the point of emotional eating. and i had lingering doubts about sexual attraction. the longhorn had great pictures, after all, but lots of people do, and the voice could turn me on, but how much could one ascertain from a couple of conversations. well, we met on friday night at midtown sundries which is this non-chain version of chili's/applebee's/tgifriday's that's right down the street from my house (i suggested this place because i thought the longhorn's choice of lucky dill deli would be closed at that hour). i thought i looked tres cute with my peach v-neck date sweater, my first pair of diesels (that's how much invested in this date), and brogues. i wanted to masculine-it up because of the sports and the dogs, etc. little did i know, i didn't even shop in the right stores. we both ran about five minutes late, but the longhorn got their first and when i first laid eyes, i found myself pleasantly surprised that i stood taller as i tend to enjoy in all things, and had an even more trim build than me but in a non-anorexic sort of way. in that i may work out sort of way. but what blew me away completely remained the clothes. green abercrombie polo shirt, plaid shorts, a tampa bay rays shirt in green and blue, and flip flops. noticeable ink around the ankle that turned me on and a smile that made me blush. beneath the ball cap i saw salt and pepper which made me happy, and in fit and form, the longhorn reminded me of a younger, straighter, hotter exsomeone. i have to be that blunt. like, instantly attracted. in fact, i felt out of my league. like, so hot i would've just went home right then and there and let the longhorn do whatever. however. the voice? even more quaking in real life. the sense of humor, on point. we chatted over a veggie burger -- the longhorn's a vegetarian -- and tuna steak -- as i'm a carnivore and felt wierd about ordering outright meat since the longhorn's a vegetarian for moral reasons not dietary. as we talked superficially about our pasts, our eyes met and we laughed. conversation flowed. one of the things that turned me on relatively early on came when the longhorn offered me some of the longhorn's french fries before even trying them. say what you will, but it felt like that indicated something vulnerable or giving or something. or maybe, i'm just fully, and boldy infatuated. so after two cocktails on my part and three pint glasses on the part of the longhorn, we left -- after a very awkward exchange where i said the food didn't matter at certain restaurants if the drinks were good and the longhorn said, "well, okay then," in that we-obviously-have-nothing-in-common way and then stood while i laughed thinking it nothing but sarcasm -- and here's where it got fishy. i could not tell whether or not the longhorn found me physically attractive or what. i mean, i was working it. i have never looked thinner in recent times. and i know how those diesels make my ass look. so we got to the corner where we had to part, and we hugged and resolved to make plans again, and then the longhorn crossed with me again, and then we hugged again. i did not know if we were supposed to kiss there. i would have -- despite the obvious hate crime that would've ensued should the less-than-savory crew crossing the street have chose to intervene -- but i didn't know. i mean, i felt overwhelmed. like so gorgeous. so perfect. so exactly what i described when i talked about that american brand of masculinity that i floated home. seriously. the city lights waxed magical in their whiteness. the street cars went silent. the people faded away. and there was no one in the world, but the longhorn.
so, then, communication sort of dried up. again, i work the craziest schedule possible and the longhorn has a similar situation to what i had when i worked at the newspaper and pier 1 imports simultaneously. the i never have a free moment when i'm not coming or going to work sort of schedule. at least now all i have to wrestle with is sleep, not availability. but i wanted to nail down the second date because i got all the right signs, but we couldn't synch up our schedules right then, but the longhorn indicated on all levels that this would be done again. but thanksgiving fell in the middle of the week and between work and family stuff, it didn't seem like it'd happen. but then my sister parachuted into town suprisingly. and she's going through this crazy situation where she hooked up with basically the man of her dreams although he has a girlfriend and she has a boyfriend. she has racked her brains for eons over the "what would've happened if" conversations for the past two years, but nothing ever came of it, until the thursday before thanksgiving. by the time she got to town, she found herself in this not-wanting-to-text-but-wanting-to-hear-from-him mode and so we had something in common wierdly. so i hadn't texted at all really. but i decided to treat my sister for a night on the town so we started the night at cassis -- which is my new bella brava -- and we split a bottle of wine and the best macaroni and cheese i've had in my life while debating whether or not to text. biting the bullet, i sent a text before we left. and the longhorn and i had texted all the way up to confirming plans on the monday next. well, with that under my belt, i scanned the restaurant to see a facebook friend of mine who i hadn't seen in the flesh since high school although we've known each other since elementary school. then, when i went to the bathroom, i saw my favorite middle eastern dictator who i have hooked up with twice and who i exchanged work flirt-texts with over two years ago now. we then went to the cassis bakery so my sister could nab a quick chocolate covered strawberry and then off to ceviche for scallops and sangria. we then jetted back to my place so i could have a quick change into banana plaids and rogan denim and headed to tampa with a pit stop at the only bar in town where i ran into everyone i know except the p.r. girl who i found out was in the hospital with pancreatitis. so we then went to blue martini but i was absolutely blitzed at this point and remember nothing except leaving relatively quickly. then, we went to the kennedy where i remember nothing. my sister told me i had a good time and i have wanted to hang out there, so. i woke up at home, but without my car. and then, when i noticed that NOTHING found itself open on thanksgiving, had to call her to tote me to breakfast. we did the IHOP thing and had quite a bit of bonding time. we then went to the grocery store and i changed clothes -- for the fifth time in nine or so hours (pre-dinner visit with grandmother, dinner, drinking, breakfast, then thanksgiving dinner) -- and then spent time with the family which went swimmingly with my family including them mentioning that i'm getting too skinny. and after i got back home, finally, i sent a last minute text to the longhorn wishing thanksgiving greetings. no reply. but then again, none from alex either (who, it must be mentioned, fooled me into thinking he had a jonathan adler sculpture when all he had was owl from west elm which i should've figured out since he had a crow from cb2 in his study). so i let it ride.
i suffered through two interminable nights at work and found out i didn't have to work on sunday -- which is why the longhorn and i agree to monday night anyway -- and so i texted such information. nothing in reply. so then around quarter till nine, i called. no answer. i sent a text message asking what time we should meet. no reply. so then the butterflies started up. and i felt myself spiralling emotionally to that ugly place of rejection and hurt. i felt embarrassed that i had went so public with how good of a find. a white unicorn i called the longhorn. the impossible find. my future spouse. plan a, i joked with rob earlier: you see, i went underwear shopping today as is my wont before dates and bought two pairs. i called the first pair of conservative boxers, plan a, just in case the date with the longhorn goes right and i somehow wind up in bed. i'll have boxers which are also cute to sleep in. but then my second were one of those oversexualized pairs of 2xist trunks. so hot, i'd fuck me. just in case i get crushed and need to hook up on the fly or hit the bar. so yeah, if plan a didn't work out, i'd need a plan b and as i swirled in my jilted-ness from no return call or text, i got a text from the exsomeone. well. in other circumstances, i might have begged off or rain checked as the sex has not compared to the random encounters of a couple weeks before. well. i was horny. i was emotional. and i found myself in the car before a half hour had passed. of course, because it's my life, as soon as i found myself in the car on the way to the exsomeone's, the longhorn replied to my text and we decided on lucky dill at half past six o'clock. so that's that, but i went through with seeing the exsoemone anyway and am i glad i did. i had the most mind-blowing, emotional sex i have had since the judge. why? the exsomeone and i kissed again. we haven't done that in at least three or four years. and afterward we cuddled and talked about everything. we haven't talked like that in probably almost two. the exsomeone told me about a sister who has become a drug addict and the niece whose future is in jeopardy, and about a sarasota friend who i always here about who has stage four, and about continued communication with my exsomeone's exsomeone. the entreprenuer. but we got to talking about "walls" and how the exsomeone has always put them up and i said, well, DUH! since it's the entire nature of our ex-relationship, but we got really deep into it and while it did open the door to some of those emotions from so long ago, they found themselves propelled down an ever elongating hallway. so much has changed. and i came clean with the exsomeone that we may have to stop talking here soon if things get serious with the longhorn. i am, after all, doggedly loyal in all things. but yeah, we'll see how it pans out tomorrow.
Set a New Course!
Open yourself to change!
On November 29, when Venus returns to intense Scorpio, the sign where she turned retrograde on October 8, you won't feel lukewarm about anything! Mercury enters serious Capricorn on November 30, a transit that will turn your mind to important matters. Then get ready for the unexpected when Uranus turns direct on December 5!
The snows of Hang Seng
Coked up bankers of Hong Kong
http://www.danwei.org/crime/coked_up_bankers_of_hong_kong.php
Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn on Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 4:41 PM
Tessa Thorniley reports from Hong Kong for Danwei on the city's drugged up financial industry.
On a Friday night in Lan Kwai Fong, a 29-year-old stockbroker knocks back a shot of sake and tries to work out how many people in his bank take drugs.
It is a question that has been rippling through the Hong Kong banking community since the death, in June, of Neil McCormick, the 36-year-old head of Asian equity derivatives at UBS on the island.
McCormick had returned to the UK for a wedding when, after snorting cocaine at a friend's home in Holland Park, London, he plunged from the balcony to his death.
While none of his friends suggested that Hong Kong had turned him into a drug user, other bankers who spoke to Danwei on condition of anonymity suggested that cocaine use on the island is ubiquitous.
“What happened to Neil is obviously terribly sad, but it is not that surprising,” says one. “The financial community here is buried in white powder.”
“On the evening of the last day of the 2009 financial year, I know of a team of accountants responsible for calculating traders' profits at a US investment bank in Hong Kong who snorted cocaine at their desks through the night until 9am in order to continue working,” she adds.
After another shot of sake, the young stockbroker, born in Hong Kong but educated in the UK, has his answer. “I would say around 65 per cent of the people who work with me have a recreational drug habit,” he says.
“I would not say they were addicts, and I've never seen them do drugs in the workplace, but at the weekend - sure!”
Having said that, he goes on to talk about how sometimes drugs do leak into the workplace. “You hear some dodgy tales here. A guy from one of the big banks was out here on business recently. He arrived on a Monday and was due to have meetings through till Wednesday and Thursday. But he went out Monday night and no one heard from him again until the following Monday. When he got back to his office in Sydney he was fired.”
Another few shots of booze and the stockbroker is ready to hit the Tazmania Ballroom for a large night out. All around him, expats are cutting loose in spectacular fashion after a long week at work.
“Hong Kong is like London on steroids!” he says. “Look where we are,” he adds, gesturing around the tight network of streets that make up Hong Kong's main bar area. “This is a one-kilometer-square party zone. Everything is just more concentrated here.”
For young expats working in high-pressure and high-rolling jobs, Hong Kong has always been a party town. The majority of the foreign population is male and single, and looking for a good time before returning home to settle down.
As one long-term resident and bar and restaurant owner put it: “There are a lot of single guys here. They are often posted here by their companies, without their families and they like to party and go out chasing women.”
And just as cocaine has become the drug of choice in London and New York, it is now the preferred sharpener of Hong Kong's expat community.
In the past few years, the drug has gone from being relatively rare to being the standard accompaniment at almost any social occasion. A day on a junk with a group of recruitment consultants and financial analysts might kick off with a 'fat line'. A quiet dinner party might be perked up with some nose candy. And out on the streets, Hong Kong is as debauched as any international city.
One recovering cocaine addict, and a Hong Kong resident for the past eight years, sketches out the picture of excess on the island. “About half the guys I've seen in recovery are white-collar workers. I've talked to people who have dropped HK$30,000 in a weekend.
“First they get the cocaine, then the girls, then the jeroboams of champagne, then the hotel suites and so on. We call them the weekend warriors. They start with beers on a Friday night and they don't stop until Sunday evening, even when their families are calling them and asking where they are. Usually they are at work first thing Monday morning though,” he said.
Out on the streets of Central, barmen and the public relations staff at nightclubs even dole out free cocaine to regulars and models, keen to get the party started at the weekend.
“That's the way the clubs work,” says one industry insider. “They dish it out for free because they want the attractive people in there, so that the men will go in and spend money. They give the models coke to get things going.”
“I know guys who hit the clubs, pick up these models and then go back to a suite at the Four Seasons and keep partying all weekend, fuelled by the drugs,” he adds.
The drug deliveries begin on Friday afternoon, according to one petite banking industry insider who recently split up with her hedge-fund manager boyfriend after discovering he was nursing a five-gram-a-week cocaine habit. “Coke dealers in Hong Kong text their customers every Friday afternoon to let them know supplies are in. At the office of one headhunter almost everybody's mobile beeps at exactly the same time,” she said.
In March, the South China Morning Post, the island's English-language newspaper, revealed the existence of “Dial-a-line”, the local taxi service that delivers more than just passengers.
The taxis are used by a network of drug dealers to deliver and sell narcotics to customers who contacted them by phone or text message.
According to the report - which included interviews with the cab service's former customers - news of the operation had spread by word of mouth and business is apparently booming.
One ex-client pointed out that the taxis did not go into Lan Kwai Fong because of police patrols, but added that it was “normally fine” if people were out for the night anywhere else, such as Soho and Hollywood Road in Central.
The banking insider said: “What I've noticed here, compared to London or New York, is the number of middle income earners who take drugs, the accountants, recruiters, research analysts. I think it's partly because they suddenly have a much higher disposable income than they did at home.”
Hong Kong has been quietly developing its cocaine habit since the mid-2000's, with police admitting for the first time, in 2005, that the drug had “increasing popularity” and that there had been “an upsurge of cases”.
The following year the street price of the drug in the city halved as South American smugglers and Hong Kong triads began to flood the island with the drug. It currently retails at around HK$1,000 a gram.
In November last year, the police said cocaine seizures had almost doubled and the amount of ketamine intercepted rose four and half times in the first ten months of 2009.
At the time, Secretary for Security Ambrose Lee Siu-kwong said the figures were higher because there was an abundant supply of drugs and the authorities had stepped up the fight against trafficking this summer.
Then, in April the police accidentally stumbled upon a record stash of 372kg of cocaine (worth an estimated HK$337 million) on the rooftop of a house near the Chinese border.
By international standards, the haul was relatively puny - most record seizures elsewhere are quoted in tons rather than kilograms. But with Hong Kong police focusing their attention on ketamine, the drug of choice for the island's young Chinese partygoers, it is only recently that cocaine has come under closer scrutiny.
And since the authorities are keen to maintain Hong Kong's status as an international financial capital, the police and courts tend not to look too closely at the behavior of the island's expatriates. A spokesman for the police denied this was the case, and said the force would “continue to crackdown on drug trafficking and abuse, regardless of the ethnicity or backgrounds of the persons involved”.
“I think the authorities here don't know what to do. Maybe they are quite naïve about what is really going on?” said one bar owner.
However, a few miles north of Lan Kwai Fong, in an abandoned Aberdeen shipyard now filled with feral dogs and illegally-dumped building materials, sits Wayne's boat.
The former Yau Ma Tei (Kowloon) ferry that once served as a tycoon’s offshore gambling den, is now a haven of calm and sofa-strewn meeting rooms. It is a world apart from the flash, fast-paced rhythm of Central. This is where Hong Kong's partygoers come when they have hit rock-bottom.
Onboard, Dr Wayne Moran runs 1212, pronounced one to 12 in reference to the 12 step treatment program, a center that treats recovering addicts. Joanne Schmitt has worked as one of the center's small team of counselors for the past two-and-a-half years, witnessing the darker side of expatriate life.
Schmitt trained as a counselor at the Hazelden Center in the United States, which has treated the likes of Liza Minnelli, Melanie Griffith and Steve Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith. She said most of her patients were from the US, UK or Australia, male, in their mid-40s and married with “very decent” salaries.
“By the time they come to us, they have probably been alcohol or drug users for some time. Addiction tends to start in the teenage years. By the time they get to Hong Kong they will probably already have a problem. But in many cases when they come here it gets worse,” she said.
She adds that cocaine, for example, is “very easy to get hold of” and that it is more common for high achievers - bankers and businessmen - to wind up in the treatment center than those lower down the pay scale.
“If I think of a typical patient, they will probably have come to Hong Kong for work. They are the work hard, play hard type. Perhaps they are also quite athletic and usually very good at what they do. Sometimes they get into alcohol or drugs as a way of letting off steam. Then, perhaps because of the lack of a wide family structure it’s easy to fall into bad habits. Usually only the spouse will know - she’ll be the only one who can see the descent - but by the time it’s a problem she is often already the enemy. Then, there isn’t the support network that people would have back home to catch them,” she said.
She underlined that not all recreational drug users become addicts in need of treatment, but said the increasingly widespread social acceptability of drug use is narrowing the line between the two.
She added that cocaine addicts are not as common at Recovery Works as alcoholics, since there were fewer drug takers who had reached the “fairly desperate state” that drunks get to.
The number of people joining Recovery Works with drug and alcohol problems is not rising, she said, although she adds that during the financial crisis a number of newly unemployed professionals started to attend daytime recovery programs for the first time.
“I think they felt they finally had the time to do something about their problem,” she said.
At Cocaine Anonymous meetings in the city, attendance ranges anywhere from two or three people to ten, suggesting that the numbers of drug takers who hit bottom and get help are relatively few, even if recreational drug use is increasingly common.
And, to put the expatriate population in Hong Kong into context, it accounts for less than five per cent of the island's seven million population, including the large Filipino and Indonesian communities. Strip those out and the figures are only in the tens of thousands.
A former cocaine addict said the number of cases were stable, and that Hong Kong was not out of line with the situation in the West. “Addiction is a disease. If you have it, it doesn't matter where you are - Hong Kong the US, the UK - you'll feed your addiction until you get help. Some people can drink a bit of alcohol then stop when they've had enough. Some people just keep going - they are the addicts. Their environment doesn't make much difference in my experience,” he said.
However, unlike the West, Hong Kong has escaped the financial crisis relatively unscathed and the banking community has cash to burn again. HSBC, which carries out an annual survey of expatriates, noted that in 2010 more than half the 250 participants agreed that their economic conditions had improved, a far higher proportion than their counterparts in London or New York.
The study also reported that Hong Kong expatriates are relatively high earners - with 35% of them earning over US$200,000 - and that 75% of them are earning more since relocating.
In a bid to help employees with problems, several of the US investment banks have imported their Employee Assistance Program (EAP) to Hong Kong.
The system came into being because of America's strict discrimination laws, because it was feared that staff who needed treatment for drug, alcohol or other personal problems could face unfair treatment in the workplace if they sought help.
Through the scheme, a third party confidentially assesses staff in need of treatment and liaises with the bank's Human Resources department, simply informing them that the employee will be absent for a period of time.
“A lot of the banks here have EAPs. US companies spend so much on their employees, they want to ensure they do the best job,” said Schmitt.
“It gives staff a chance to get help if they need it. The company pays the EAP for their services but the EAP isn't part of the company. Sometimes employees get sent there by their bosses though. I think if an employee needed help once or twice the company will be supportive. After that, I'd doubt it. Also this service isn't really provided by any Asian or British or other European companies,” she added.
Human Dynamic, an EAP firm with offices across Asia and partners around the world lists a range of services on its website from tackling poor morale and stress in the workplace to treatment of more serious issues.
The firm which carries the tagline “Happy Employees will generate Happy Customers and Happy Shareholders” declined to comment on whether drug problems among employees are becoming a bigger issue in Hong Kong.
Among the bankers, there is widespread denial that anyone is partying harder now than they were in the 1980s. One former banker, turned recruitment consultant said that more people had “burned out or overdosed” in the 80s, unable to cope with the sudden wealth that the island created.
More than a decade before the colonial lights were switched off by Chris Patten in 1997, the English-speaking expat population in Hong Kong was already predicting the end of swinging Hong Kong.
In a 1986 Sunday Times magazine article entitled 'Jittery City', a variety of long-time residents predicted the demise of the entertainment industry, nudity and girlie bars.
Pat Sephton, described as a Liverpudlian former model who back then ran a Tsim Sha Tsui night club known as Bottoms Up told the newspaper there was “not a chance” that her girlie bar would be allowed to exist after 1997.
“I know they assure us nothing will change. But you remember what happened to Shanghai? You remember Blood Alley and all the girls in the clubs along The Bund? They stayed for a month or two, and then they were forced out. There's no way a communist administrator is going to allow men to ogle at naked girls”.
On the streets of Lan Kwai Fong or Wan Chai today however, it is clear that the party is still in full swing.
Tessa Thorniley, a freelance business and travel writer based in Shanghai. She writes for newspapers, magazines and websites including The Daily Mail, the South China Morning Post, the Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and Wallpaper.
Her previous articles for Danwei are Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa, land of a billion customers, Bankrupt schools and their fleeing foreign bosses and China's private healthcare racket.
Links and Sources
* The Daily Mail: Leading banker jumped to his death after snorting cocaine at welcome home party
* CNN: Lan Kwai Fong: From sweaty taverns to decadent discos
* For help with cocaine abuse: 1212 (Hong Kong) (24 Hour bilingual hotline +852 9483 2894)
* Cocaine Anonymous (Hong Kong) (+852 8101 1125)
Tags for this entry:
* banking
* , cocaine
* , crime
* , drugs
* , financial industry
* , Hong Kong
* , investment
* , police
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Craig Stephen's This Week in China
Craig Stephen
Oct. 10, 2010, 8:12 p.m. EDT
Prada listing shows Hong Kong is height of fashion
Commentary: Dangers lurk in fickle new-listing market
By Craig Stephen
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) - News that Italian fashion house Prada is mulling an initial public offering in Hong Kong underscores the city-state’s place at the height of fashion for new listings. Not content with surpassing London, Shanghai and New York in funds raised this year, Hong Kong’s bourse is even pulling in top European fashion names.
Is this another signs asset markets in Hong Kong are spinning out of control in a glut of liquidity or just further evidence of the economic swing towards Asia?
Prada would certainly look a little out of step next to existing Hong Kong retail names such as Bossini, Giordano and Esprit. But perhaps this reflects the changing face of the city as a shoppers’ paradise. For the new mainland Chinese tourist, the draw card is not copy watches and street markets, but the chains of luxury brands selling their wares duty free. Prada’s move is also likely recognition of the growing importance of the Chinese consumer, which is on course to surpass Japan in household wealth in the next five years, according to a new report by Credit Suisse.
Still, the Italian brand will want to make sure it does not suffer an identity crisis, where listing in Hong Kong translates into “made in Hong Kong” or “made in China.” No doubt, a key consideration is the rich valuations and large investor appetite for new listings in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong has become the dumping ground for global liquidity, squeezed between unprecedented monetary easing in the West and speculative money flows exiting China. One illustration of the advantageous liquidity conditions is that Agricultural Bank of China (THE:HK:1288) (SHANGHAI:CN:601288) now trades at a 30% premium in Hong Kong to Shanghai after its mega dual listing three months ago. This all means Hong Kong is in the liquidity sweet spot for IPOs globally, where everyone tends to look better on the new listing catwalk.
This year, $23.9 billion has been raised from 53 IPOs, and Hong Kong is now preparing for the bumper $15 billion listing of AIG’s (NYSE:AIG) AIA arm.
Roubini calls on China to raise Its currency
Nouriel Roubini, Economics Professor and consultant, made famous for his 2005 prediction that home price speculation would sink the economy, sees currency battles spreading globally. He spoke to reporters at the IMF's annual meeting in Washington, DC.
In recent days, it appears the pace of money circulating in Hong Kong is accelerating. Last weekend, buyers splashed out 13 billion Hong Kong dollars ($1.68 billion) on new properties, while during the week, turnover on the stock market rose above HK$100 billion for only the second time since November last year, as the Hang Seng Index (THE:HK:HSI) reached a two-year high.
One element driving this is cheap money and negative real interest rates, with inflation running at 3%. For example, HSBC (NYSE:HBC) (THE:HK:5) in a recent press release lists its savings rates: $5,000, $50,000 or $1 million on account, all pay 0.001% interest. At the same time, the bank appears to be aggressively seeking to lend money, if the offers of no-fee cash advances in my mail box are anything to go by.
While these loose money conditions have supported the stock market, it has also led to growing controversy over high property prices and the risk of an asset bubble. Despite a series of anti-speculation measures by the government, there are few signs of a property slowdown. Rather, property stocks have been rallying strongly - Cheung Kong Holdings (THE:HK:1) (PINK:CHEUY) , property developer of Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing, is now up 25% since August.
This will provide an interesting backdrop as Chief Executive Donald Tsang gives his policy address on Wednesday, with the market looking for some direction on official thinking on the economy and asset prices. Perhaps the movement in developer prices tells us there will be little measures with teeth.
For many other Asian countries from Japan to Thailand, the big policy issue just now is the multi-year highs currencies are making against the dollar. And while China is receiving criticism from all quarters on its peg to the greenback, it is surprising how little attention the Hong Kong dollar peg gets. This is undoubtedly one factor contributing to capital flows as investors bet that if it does not move in tandem with the region, asset prices will take the strain.
In the meantime, macroeconomic conditions are undeniably favorable for Asian equities, note Nomura in a new strategy report. While valuations would normally be contracting as the market faces a slowdown in earnings momentum, a combination of negative real rates, hot-money inflows and rising price (assets and goods) are expanding the multiples.
Put another way, the ‘P’ is rising while the ‘E’ is declining. Little surprise then, new issues are making a beeline to Hong Kong, the most liquid and international of Asian markets.
Still, the investment banks notes these benign conditions might not last.
“The biggest risk for Asian markets is the rising probability of competitive devaluations in [the Group of Three major economies] disrupting monetary operations in Asia through capital inflows and higher local inflation.”
The answer, it seems, is to be on the watch for any reversal in capital flows which, like fashion trends and the market for IPOs, can be notoriously fickle.
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runway review
CHLOE
PARIS, October 11, 2000 -
VH1/VOGUE Fashion Awards Designer of the Year 2000
Stella McCartney certainly did not disappoint her legions of fabulous young fans who rely on Chloé for the season's hot new trends. But this season, in addition to delivering sexy new T-shirts and plunging bathing suits (with playful pineapple motifs), McCartney explored grown-up territory. Perhaps drawing inspiration from Schiaparelli's inventive chic, McCartney worked graphic horse prints (borrowed from Stubbs and Géricault) into loosely structured diagonal-seam dresses and beautiful jackets with a softly draped triangle shoulder. Skirts were long and relaxed, perfect when paired with lightweight, flouncy off-the shoulder tops. Wide-brim hats and dainty pillboxes with a tulle overlay gave the look a touch of '30s sophistication. More casual pieces included sexy jeans with zipper pockets and metallic horses galloping along the backside, and a T-shirt with strategically placed banana appliqués in the front and the words "Keep your bananas off my melons" in the back.
This was a very strong collection for McCartney, and one that confirms her considerable talent and potential as a major designer.
- By Armand Limnander
Stella McCartney Spring 2011 Ready-to-Wear
PARIS, October 4, 2010
By Nicole Phelps
How do you do the new longer lengths and not look mumsy? That was the puzzle Stella McCartney set out to solve in a collection that played to her strengths. Her answer-box pleats in back, a pair of slits up the front of each leg-was simple enough, but the results were very sexy in her signature breezy way. A silk dress in a vibrant citrus print (first bananas at Prada, now lemons and grapefruit at McCartney) was also slashed at the waist and back, and it had an easy chic that could make it the one thing in your closet you turn to again and again. It just might be the dress of the summer.
In contrast, a denim section of tunics and shorts in boxy shapes looked somewhat clunky. But as ever, McCartney had a lot of strong tailoring, slightly softened this season in a palette of faded pastels like rose, pistachio, and light blue. The other thing that made her suits look new was the cut of the pants. High-waisted, cropped, cuffed, and with a hint of a flare, they stood out in a month full of floor-scraping trousers.
And what of the red-carpet frocks for her front-row gal pals? The designer, who's expecting baby number four, skipped them this season. As an alternative, she showed a pair of double-breasted backless vests, totally on trend and totally McCartney. Salma and Liv would no doubt approve.
Prada by Sarah Mower
http://www.vogue.com/collections/spring-2011/prada/review/
Sunny, funny, very South American. Miuccia Prada-usually taken for one of fashion’s most intense and complex thinkers-was so far from feeling deep and intellectual for spring that she actually had a pair of bananas dangling from her ears. “I was interested in minimal and baroque. For me,” she said, gesturing at the sombreros, bright horizontal stripes, multi-colored fox stoles, wedged espadrilles, and cotton sundresses which were about to take to the runway, “this is a musical.”
If it wasn’t quite Carmen Miranda in The Gang’s All Here, this was another definite sign that straightforward, wearable, enjoyable fashion is back on the agenda. Their hair in slicked-down tango-dancer marcel waves, feet in Mary Janes elevated on layered, striped, espadrille wedges, and walking to a mix of tango- and flamenco-inflected music, the girls evoked a spirit that was Cuban deco, or somewhere thereabouts. Not that the exact geographical and historical references mattered-how could they, when prints involving monkeys and bananas were swinging along the runway in the form of flounced rumba skirts and bowling shirts, and when every other eye-popping, horizontally striped, scoop-backed sundress or plain cotton skirt-suit was so easy to imagine wearing on a summer’s day?
In some ways, it read as a return to the simple, clean-lined pieces for city living which first won Prada droves of working-women followers in the nineties-only now her pairings of pencil skirts and curved-shoulder jackets came mostly in vivid orange, green, or ultraviolet rather than black. Maybe that was the “minimalism” she was getting at-a reminder, in times when the nineties are being referenced in so many places, that she was the first to carve out that user-friendly template? Still, this is today, not 1994, and there’s a distinct sense of humor in the way she reclaimed that territory, thrusting cheerfully striped fur stoles (a knowing nod to the seventies/thirties glam trend of the season) and stripey bags into each girl’s hand.
Ultimately, this wasn’t the kind of Prada collection whose layers of meaning demand a Ph.D in cultural studies, art, or feminist politics to fathom. She’d applied her intelligence, instead, to making a pragmatic, balanced collection which ran from useful daywear to simple-sexy sunny-day dresses to decorative crochet-lace appliquéd shifts with shimmying bead-fringed hems. All of that was contained within the boundaries of Prada’s separate, self-drawn world, but in her way, she pointed out the same thing as Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs did with their shows in New York: It’s time fashion is fun again.
Prada Spring 2011 Ready-to-Wear
http://www.style.com/fashionshows/review/S2011RTW-PRADA/
MILAN, September 23, 2010
By Tim Blanks
Only Miuccia Prada could attach a label like "minimal baroque" to a collection whose references ranged from hospital scrubs to seventeenth-century cherubs to Jazz Age superwoman Josephine Baker. Fishing around for an alternative to "fresh," she herself came up with "brave, bold, and obvious"-that last one a typical head-spinner. Maybe there was something obvious in the sheer uplift of the solid blocks of primary color; the jungle prints and striped sombreros; the straightforward summery-ness of a spaghetti-strapped, ruffle-hemmed dress striped in orange and pink. But there was also more than enough of Prada's twisty-ness to boost this collection into her already chock-full pantheon of greats. Those cherubs, for a start, plucked from a curlicued baroque interior and all mixed up with bananas and naive monkeys in an exuberantly cartoonish print that looked like something lifted from a poster for a Josephine Baker performance at the Folies Bergère in the twenties. (The models' finger-waved hair also echoed Baker's.) But there was nothing cartoonish about a supremely elegant white shift with a Baker-like silhouette sinuously snaking up and out of a forest of multicolored curlicues.
Prada delivered electric hits of orange, green, blue, and radioactive violet in deliberately plain cotton suits, like the most (extra)ordinary uniforms. That theme continued in all the stripes. Prisoner, postman, sailor, orderly: The uniforms might have taken a cue from her last-equally special-men's collection, but they were also an evolution of Fall's spectacularly womanly shapes. This time around, however, the glamour was raw, amplified by the pop-colored stoles the models were toting, the graphic silent-movie makeup by Pat McGrath, and the severely sensual outfits in basic black that closed the show as the soundtrack crackled with the static of an old tango record. Miuccia's message was crystal-clear. As she said backstage, banana earrings vibrating: "It's time to be bold." And that's one maxim that, with any luck, will rub off on the world at large.
Prada Spring 2011 Menswear
http://www.style.com/fashionshows/review/S2011MEN-PRADA
MILAN, June 20, 2010
By Tim Blanks
What was that set that the Prada audience walked in on today? Rows of massive concrete columns held apart two huge metal grilles, forming a boxy industrial space that could have been an underground car park, or the foundations of a skyscraper, or the bowels of the Battlestar Galactica. But then the lights snapped on with a sizzle, the mutated pulse of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" filled the room, and the show started with a lean blue suit, white shirt, and tie-the traditional male business uniform in all its three-buttoned glory.
As things progressed, uniforms from around the globe emerged as the theme. Backstage, Miuccia Prada explained that she had wanted everything as simple as possible in terms of fabrication, construction, and silhouette. So she used cotton, the hardest-working fabric in the world. From there she landed on the idea of working clothes, with a number being made from denim, the hardest-working cotton of all. Denim was used for hospital scrubs, layered over a shirt and tie of the same fabric, and was also cut into some of those lean three-buttons, one with white contrast stitching.
There were blues other than denim blues that evoked other uniforms: postmen, sailors (lots of boatnecks). Potent hits of color, meanwhile, were intended to suggest uniforms from other countries, the cross-cultural crush being a Prada signature. Striped shirts even looked a little like sports kit, especially in tandem with the baggy shorts that gave the collection an added airiness. Shoes took the weight this season with superthick soles made from sandwiching other soles together: wing-tips, espadrilles, trainers.
The week in Milan so far has been marked by heavy-ish collections that seem to pay little mind to the season for which they're intended. True, the weather here has been laughably grim for the start of summer, but Prada at least offered clothes that were light, playful, and optimistic, culminating in bright striped cotton sweaters that said it can only get better from here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/fashion/24iht-rprada.html
September 23, 2010, 3:55 pm
Monkey Business at Prada
By CATHY HORYN
The world can always use a little more glamour, and that was essentially the underlying message at the Prada spring 2011 show here in Milan tonight, set as it was on a raised runway covered in steel mesh. But this is Prada, and no one is more questioning of glamour - and the banality of luxury - than Miuccia Prada.
So she tossed glamour a banana peel.
Start with the fact that the clothes were all in Japanese cotton, from the suits to the black, ruffle-neck dresses that closed the show, and the shapes were comprehensibly basic - almost a uniform. The palette swings from Seuss to rugby, from sweet to jock. The models’ pinheads evoke the 1920s, with silver-blue eye shadow, yet they have thick, masculine brows. They’re carrying fox fur stoles, some striped like a tiger’s tail, and monkeys are scrambling up the sides of some of the dresses, a gesture as silly as a night club swizzle stick.
Backstage, Ms. Prada, who had on a gray pullover with a checked skirt and a pair of dangling banana earrings, offered musicals as a reference, but it was perhaps easier and simpler to see glamour, and the contrast to masculine uniforms, like the suit or the athletic shirt. What I liked, aside from the color, was the use of cotton, albeit some very special Japanese kinds. Fendi also had lots of cotton - not technical stuff, not chiffon imitating nylon. And no hard edges. Baroque monkeys probably appeal less to Ms. Prada’s sense of humor than to her appreciation of history, and her way of bringing it forward in fashion.
I also liked the last few dresses in the show - black cotton with a pie-crust ruffle at the neck and elbow-length sleeves. It’s the little black dress revised.
Milan Fashion Week Spring 2011, Miuccia Prada, Prada
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2010/09/prada_just_had_a_chiquita_bana.html
September 23, 2010
Prada: Banana Bright
By SUZY MENKES
MILAN - The fur scarves were so bright they popped off the runway: DayGlo orange, shocking pink and bright green. Something for foxy showgirls to wind around perfectly plain black dresses.
For this was Prada , home of shock, surprise and awe that one designer can have such courage and daring - yet create such simple clothes. Yes, Miuccia Prada herself wore dangling banana earrings to take her bow and showed dresses printed with a monkey prancing in a baroque frame of greenery.
But the designer also cut a new, longer silhouette, and reinvented a new suit with elongated jacket, over-the knee slim skirt in pervasive horizontal stripes and purposeful platform sneakers in more bright colors.
“I started from the simplicity of the men’s collection - but I wanted it to be like a musical as a symbol of boldness,” said Ms. Prada backstage, where the sandwiches were as brightly colored as the bikinis of a Brazilian beach.
But, of course, not even the banana-patterned shirt or Mexican embroideries on a white dress were referring to any hot-blooded South American scenario but to the burning imagination in the Prada mind.
As they marched out on the shiny silver runway under a metal structure that looked like the roof of a city parking garage, the strong colors and geometric stripes were just dabs of brightness on something plain.
Ms. Prada talked about her fascination with the baroque and the way that it undulated from Sicily to South America - hence curlicue sunglasses and sombreros hanging from the nape beside the two tidy little buns of hair.
The Prada message was for color, optimism and imagination, but it was also basically streamlined, using cotton fabric for slender striped dresses.
As the cheers rang out for this exceptional collection, the audience knew that nothing in fashion is so difficult to achieve as a powerful idea perfectly executed.
Prada Shuts Down Runway Rumors
http://www.wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/prada-shuts-down-runway-rumors-3308699
Posted Monday September 27, 2010
Prada firmly denied speculation Monday that it would alter or nix the spring/summer collection it paraded on the Milan runway last week. The rumor went that Prada’s chief executive officer Patrizio Bertelli was unhappy with the colorful and graphic range, which received good reviews from critics and retailers. According to sources, Prada cancelled some writing appointments in Milan for American retailers, saying the company would bring an enhanced offering to New York at the end of October.
http://jakandjil.com/blog/?p=4910
Prada's New Label | Jessica Bumpus | 29 September 2010
http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/daily/100929-prada-country-of-origin-labels-.aspx
MIUCCIA PRADA is introducing new "country of origin" labels to her designs - taking into account where exactly the garment has been manufactured and from where it has been inspired.
"It's taking away the hypocrisy," explains Prada of the idea which will work to recognise that although 85 per cent of the brand's goods are made in Italian factories, tapping into international artisans is not something to be ashamed of. So, a dress featuring Chikan embroidery, specific to Muslim India, will be labelled "Prada Milano, Made in India".
"It's something I have been thinking about for a long time and there are many different aspects. 'Made in Italy' - who cares? It's not a brand strength if you have to defend your work. Mine is a political statement and it comes from a personal appreciation of originality. You have to embrace the world if you want to live in it now," she tells the International Herald Tribune.
The first results can be seen in the following projects: "PRADA Made in Scotland", a collection of tartan wool kilts from the original workshops that specialise in centuries-old manufacturing and weave techniques; "PRADA Made in India", a collection of entirely handmade garments from the workshops that specialise in the aforementioned Chikan; "PRADA Made in Japan", a collection of jeans produced by Dova denim manufacturer; and "PRADA Made in Peru", a collection of alpaca wool knitwear using artisanal techniques.
Prada's new move takes the opposite approach to a new law designed to set exact guidelines as to what "Made in Italy" constitutes - currently the entire garment or just part of it.
http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2010/09/prada_just_had_a_chiquita_bana.html
Starting something fresh and new is definitely favored, and other people are likely to appreciate your amazing charm even more than usual today. It's a great time for your love life!
you see, when people tell you not to put all of your eggs into one basket, generally, they mean for you to do some other hackneyed thing like "play the field" or "enjoy being single," but i decided to ward off feeling from coming too quickly and too strongly by simply making myself vulnerable to feelings i once had in the past. but, hey, it's got me writing, and that's something, because otherwise, i'd find myself sitting here freaking out over misinterpreted text messages and half signals instead of taking my own advice and walking into this situation with eyes wide open and addressing the possibilities like an adult. what, you may ask, am i talking about? well, i've met someone. someone who has the potential to replace the exsomeone. it takes me a while to meet someone. seriously. and it's an odd thing for me to meet someone who likes me with anywhere near the same intensity that i like them. can i find someone to have sex with? certainly. i think it's a fascination fuck for some. for others, it's the idea that they're being really bad by being with me. they're "acting out" and they know it. i'm one of those types of freaks. i'm that girl in the bar with her fuck me pumps. they're valentinos most times, or lately, ysl. so, as of my last post, i had some doubts about the realness of this thing. the truth. the re-schedule of the first date freaked me out to the point of emotional eating. and i had lingering doubts about sexual attraction. the longhorn had great pictures, after all, but lots of people do, and the voice could turn me on, but how much could one ascertain from a couple of conversations. well, we met on friday night at midtown sundries which is this non-chain version of chili's/applebee's/tgifriday's that's right down the street from my house (i suggested this place because i thought the longhorn's choice of lucky dill deli would be closed at that hour). i thought i looked tres cute with my peach v-neck date sweater, my first pair of diesels (that's how much invested in this date), and brogues. i wanted to masculine-it up because of the sports and the dogs, etc. little did i know, i didn't even shop in the right stores. we both ran about five minutes late, but the longhorn got their first and when i first laid eyes, i found myself pleasantly surprised that i stood taller as i tend to enjoy in all things, and had an even more trim build than me but in a non-anorexic sort of way. in that i may work out sort of way. but what blew me away completely remained the clothes. green abercrombie polo shirt, plaid shorts, a tampa bay rays shirt in green and blue, and flip flops. noticeable ink around the ankle that turned me on and a smile that made me blush. beneath the ball cap i saw salt and pepper which made me happy, and in fit and form, the longhorn reminded me of a younger, straighter, hotter exsomeone. i have to be that blunt. like, instantly attracted. in fact, i felt out of my league. like, so hot i would've just went home right then and there and let the longhorn do whatever. however. the voice? even more quaking in real life. the sense of humor, on point. we chatted over a veggie burger -- the longhorn's a vegetarian -- and tuna steak -- as i'm a carnivore and felt wierd about ordering outright meat since the longhorn's a vegetarian for moral reasons not dietary. as we talked superficially about our pasts, our eyes met and we laughed. conversation flowed. one of the things that turned me on relatively early on came when the longhorn offered me some of the longhorn's french fries before even trying them. say what you will, but it felt like that indicated something vulnerable or giving or something. or maybe, i'm just fully, and boldy infatuated. so after two cocktails on my part and three pint glasses on the part of the longhorn, we left -- after a very awkward exchange where i said the food didn't matter at certain restaurants if the drinks were good and the longhorn said, "well, okay then," in that we-obviously-have-nothing-in-common way and then stood while i laughed thinking it nothing but sarcasm -- and here's where it got fishy. i could not tell whether or not the longhorn found me physically attractive or what. i mean, i was working it. i have never looked thinner in recent times. and i know how those diesels make my ass look. so we got to the corner where we had to part, and we hugged and resolved to make plans again, and then the longhorn crossed with me again, and then we hugged again. i did not know if we were supposed to kiss there. i would have -- despite the obvious hate crime that would've ensued should the less-than-savory crew crossing the street have chose to intervene -- but i didn't know. i mean, i felt overwhelmed. like so gorgeous. so perfect. so exactly what i described when i talked about that american brand of masculinity that i floated home. seriously. the city lights waxed magical in their whiteness. the street cars went silent. the people faded away. and there was no one in the world, but the longhorn.
so, then, communication sort of dried up. again, i work the craziest schedule possible and the longhorn has a similar situation to what i had when i worked at the newspaper and pier 1 imports simultaneously. the i never have a free moment when i'm not coming or going to work sort of schedule. at least now all i have to wrestle with is sleep, not availability. but i wanted to nail down the second date because i got all the right signs, but we couldn't synch up our schedules right then, but the longhorn indicated on all levels that this would be done again. but thanksgiving fell in the middle of the week and between work and family stuff, it didn't seem like it'd happen. but then my sister parachuted into town suprisingly. and she's going through this crazy situation where she hooked up with basically the man of her dreams although he has a girlfriend and she has a boyfriend. she has racked her brains for eons over the "what would've happened if" conversations for the past two years, but nothing ever came of it, until the thursday before thanksgiving. by the time she got to town, she found herself in this not-wanting-to-text-but-wanting-to-hear-from-him mode and so we had something in common wierdly. so i hadn't texted at all really. but i decided to treat my sister for a night on the town so we started the night at cassis -- which is my new bella brava -- and we split a bottle of wine and the best macaroni and cheese i've had in my life while debating whether or not to text. biting the bullet, i sent a text before we left. and the longhorn and i had texted all the way up to confirming plans on the monday next. well, with that under my belt, i scanned the restaurant to see a facebook friend of mine who i hadn't seen in the flesh since high school although we've known each other since elementary school. then, when i went to the bathroom, i saw my favorite middle eastern dictator who i have hooked up with twice and who i exchanged work flirt-texts with over two years ago now. we then went to the cassis bakery so my sister could nab a quick chocolate covered strawberry and then off to ceviche for scallops and sangria. we then jetted back to my place so i could have a quick change into banana plaids and rogan denim and headed to tampa with a pit stop at the only bar in town where i ran into everyone i know except the p.r. girl who i found out was in the hospital with pancreatitis. so we then went to blue martini but i was absolutely blitzed at this point and remember nothing except leaving relatively quickly. then, we went to the kennedy where i remember nothing. my sister told me i had a good time and i have wanted to hang out there, so. i woke up at home, but without my car. and then, when i noticed that NOTHING found itself open on thanksgiving, had to call her to tote me to breakfast. we did the IHOP thing and had quite a bit of bonding time. we then went to the grocery store and i changed clothes -- for the fifth time in nine or so hours (pre-dinner visit with grandmother, dinner, drinking, breakfast, then thanksgiving dinner) -- and then spent time with the family which went swimmingly with my family including them mentioning that i'm getting too skinny. and after i got back home, finally, i sent a last minute text to the longhorn wishing thanksgiving greetings. no reply. but then again, none from alex either (who, it must be mentioned, fooled me into thinking he had a jonathan adler sculpture when all he had was owl from west elm which i should've figured out since he had a crow from cb2 in his study). so i let it ride.
i suffered through two interminable nights at work and found out i didn't have to work on sunday -- which is why the longhorn and i agree to monday night anyway -- and so i texted such information. nothing in reply. so then around quarter till nine, i called. no answer. i sent a text message asking what time we should meet. no reply. so then the butterflies started up. and i felt myself spiralling emotionally to that ugly place of rejection and hurt. i felt embarrassed that i had went so public with how good of a find. a white unicorn i called the longhorn. the impossible find. my future spouse. plan a, i joked with rob earlier: you see, i went underwear shopping today as is my wont before dates and bought two pairs. i called the first pair of conservative boxers, plan a, just in case the date with the longhorn goes right and i somehow wind up in bed. i'll have boxers which are also cute to sleep in. but then my second were one of those oversexualized pairs of 2xist trunks. so hot, i'd fuck me. just in case i get crushed and need to hook up on the fly or hit the bar. so yeah, if plan a didn't work out, i'd need a plan b and as i swirled in my jilted-ness from no return call or text, i got a text from the exsomeone. well. in other circumstances, i might have begged off or rain checked as the sex has not compared to the random encounters of a couple weeks before. well. i was horny. i was emotional. and i found myself in the car before a half hour had passed. of course, because it's my life, as soon as i found myself in the car on the way to the exsomeone's, the longhorn replied to my text and we decided on lucky dill at half past six o'clock. so that's that, but i went through with seeing the exsoemone anyway and am i glad i did. i had the most mind-blowing, emotional sex i have had since the judge. why? the exsomeone and i kissed again. we haven't done that in at least three or four years. and afterward we cuddled and talked about everything. we haven't talked like that in probably almost two. the exsomeone told me about a sister who has become a drug addict and the niece whose future is in jeopardy, and about a sarasota friend who i always here about who has stage four, and about continued communication with my exsomeone's exsomeone. the entreprenuer. but we got to talking about "walls" and how the exsomeone has always put them up and i said, well, DUH! since it's the entire nature of our ex-relationship, but we got really deep into it and while it did open the door to some of those emotions from so long ago, they found themselves propelled down an ever elongating hallway. so much has changed. and i came clean with the exsomeone that we may have to stop talking here soon if things get serious with the longhorn. i am, after all, doggedly loyal in all things. but yeah, we'll see how it pans out tomorrow.
Set a New Course!
Open yourself to change!
On November 29, when Venus returns to intense Scorpio, the sign where she turned retrograde on October 8, you won't feel lukewarm about anything! Mercury enters serious Capricorn on November 30, a transit that will turn your mind to important matters. Then get ready for the unexpected when Uranus turns direct on December 5!
Click to viewThe snows of Hang Seng
Coked up bankers of Hong Kong
http://www.danwei.org/crime/coked_up_bankers_of_hong_kong.php
Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn on Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 4:41 PM
Tessa Thorniley reports from Hong Kong for Danwei on the city's drugged up financial industry.
On a Friday night in Lan Kwai Fong, a 29-year-old stockbroker knocks back a shot of sake and tries to work out how many people in his bank take drugs.
It is a question that has been rippling through the Hong Kong banking community since the death, in June, of Neil McCormick, the 36-year-old head of Asian equity derivatives at UBS on the island.
McCormick had returned to the UK for a wedding when, after snorting cocaine at a friend's home in Holland Park, London, he plunged from the balcony to his death.
While none of his friends suggested that Hong Kong had turned him into a drug user, other bankers who spoke to Danwei on condition of anonymity suggested that cocaine use on the island is ubiquitous.
“What happened to Neil is obviously terribly sad, but it is not that surprising,” says one. “The financial community here is buried in white powder.”
“On the evening of the last day of the 2009 financial year, I know of a team of accountants responsible for calculating traders' profits at a US investment bank in Hong Kong who snorted cocaine at their desks through the night until 9am in order to continue working,” she adds.
After another shot of sake, the young stockbroker, born in Hong Kong but educated in the UK, has his answer. “I would say around 65 per cent of the people who work with me have a recreational drug habit,” he says.
“I would not say they were addicts, and I've never seen them do drugs in the workplace, but at the weekend - sure!”
Having said that, he goes on to talk about how sometimes drugs do leak into the workplace. “You hear some dodgy tales here. A guy from one of the big banks was out here on business recently. He arrived on a Monday and was due to have meetings through till Wednesday and Thursday. But he went out Monday night and no one heard from him again until the following Monday. When he got back to his office in Sydney he was fired.”
Another few shots of booze and the stockbroker is ready to hit the Tazmania Ballroom for a large night out. All around him, expats are cutting loose in spectacular fashion after a long week at work.
“Hong Kong is like London on steroids!” he says. “Look where we are,” he adds, gesturing around the tight network of streets that make up Hong Kong's main bar area. “This is a one-kilometer-square party zone. Everything is just more concentrated here.”
For young expats working in high-pressure and high-rolling jobs, Hong Kong has always been a party town. The majority of the foreign population is male and single, and looking for a good time before returning home to settle down.
As one long-term resident and bar and restaurant owner put it: “There are a lot of single guys here. They are often posted here by their companies, without their families and they like to party and go out chasing women.”
And just as cocaine has become the drug of choice in London and New York, it is now the preferred sharpener of Hong Kong's expat community.
In the past few years, the drug has gone from being relatively rare to being the standard accompaniment at almost any social occasion. A day on a junk with a group of recruitment consultants and financial analysts might kick off with a 'fat line'. A quiet dinner party might be perked up with some nose candy. And out on the streets, Hong Kong is as debauched as any international city.
One recovering cocaine addict, and a Hong Kong resident for the past eight years, sketches out the picture of excess on the island. “About half the guys I've seen in recovery are white-collar workers. I've talked to people who have dropped HK$30,000 in a weekend.
“First they get the cocaine, then the girls, then the jeroboams of champagne, then the hotel suites and so on. We call them the weekend warriors. They start with beers on a Friday night and they don't stop until Sunday evening, even when their families are calling them and asking where they are. Usually they are at work first thing Monday morning though,” he said.
Out on the streets of Central, barmen and the public relations staff at nightclubs even dole out free cocaine to regulars and models, keen to get the party started at the weekend.
“That's the way the clubs work,” says one industry insider. “They dish it out for free because they want the attractive people in there, so that the men will go in and spend money. They give the models coke to get things going.”
“I know guys who hit the clubs, pick up these models and then go back to a suite at the Four Seasons and keep partying all weekend, fuelled by the drugs,” he adds.
The drug deliveries begin on Friday afternoon, according to one petite banking industry insider who recently split up with her hedge-fund manager boyfriend after discovering he was nursing a five-gram-a-week cocaine habit. “Coke dealers in Hong Kong text their customers every Friday afternoon to let them know supplies are in. At the office of one headhunter almost everybody's mobile beeps at exactly the same time,” she said.
In March, the South China Morning Post, the island's English-language newspaper, revealed the existence of “Dial-a-line”, the local taxi service that delivers more than just passengers.
The taxis are used by a network of drug dealers to deliver and sell narcotics to customers who contacted them by phone or text message.
According to the report - which included interviews with the cab service's former customers - news of the operation had spread by word of mouth and business is apparently booming.
One ex-client pointed out that the taxis did not go into Lan Kwai Fong because of police patrols, but added that it was “normally fine” if people were out for the night anywhere else, such as Soho and Hollywood Road in Central.
The banking insider said: “What I've noticed here, compared to London or New York, is the number of middle income earners who take drugs, the accountants, recruiters, research analysts. I think it's partly because they suddenly have a much higher disposable income than they did at home.”
Hong Kong has been quietly developing its cocaine habit since the mid-2000's, with police admitting for the first time, in 2005, that the drug had “increasing popularity” and that there had been “an upsurge of cases”.
The following year the street price of the drug in the city halved as South American smugglers and Hong Kong triads began to flood the island with the drug. It currently retails at around HK$1,000 a gram.
In November last year, the police said cocaine seizures had almost doubled and the amount of ketamine intercepted rose four and half times in the first ten months of 2009.
At the time, Secretary for Security Ambrose Lee Siu-kwong said the figures were higher because there was an abundant supply of drugs and the authorities had stepped up the fight against trafficking this summer.
Then, in April the police accidentally stumbled upon a record stash of 372kg of cocaine (worth an estimated HK$337 million) on the rooftop of a house near the Chinese border.
By international standards, the haul was relatively puny - most record seizures elsewhere are quoted in tons rather than kilograms. But with Hong Kong police focusing their attention on ketamine, the drug of choice for the island's young Chinese partygoers, it is only recently that cocaine has come under closer scrutiny.
And since the authorities are keen to maintain Hong Kong's status as an international financial capital, the police and courts tend not to look too closely at the behavior of the island's expatriates. A spokesman for the police denied this was the case, and said the force would “continue to crackdown on drug trafficking and abuse, regardless of the ethnicity or backgrounds of the persons involved”.
“I think the authorities here don't know what to do. Maybe they are quite naïve about what is really going on?” said one bar owner.
However, a few miles north of Lan Kwai Fong, in an abandoned Aberdeen shipyard now filled with feral dogs and illegally-dumped building materials, sits Wayne's boat.
The former Yau Ma Tei (Kowloon) ferry that once served as a tycoon’s offshore gambling den, is now a haven of calm and sofa-strewn meeting rooms. It is a world apart from the flash, fast-paced rhythm of Central. This is where Hong Kong's partygoers come when they have hit rock-bottom.
Onboard, Dr Wayne Moran runs 1212, pronounced one to 12 in reference to the 12 step treatment program, a center that treats recovering addicts. Joanne Schmitt has worked as one of the center's small team of counselors for the past two-and-a-half years, witnessing the darker side of expatriate life.
Schmitt trained as a counselor at the Hazelden Center in the United States, which has treated the likes of Liza Minnelli, Melanie Griffith and Steve Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith. She said most of her patients were from the US, UK or Australia, male, in their mid-40s and married with “very decent” salaries.
“By the time they come to us, they have probably been alcohol or drug users for some time. Addiction tends to start in the teenage years. By the time they get to Hong Kong they will probably already have a problem. But in many cases when they come here it gets worse,” she said.
She adds that cocaine, for example, is “very easy to get hold of” and that it is more common for high achievers - bankers and businessmen - to wind up in the treatment center than those lower down the pay scale.
“If I think of a typical patient, they will probably have come to Hong Kong for work. They are the work hard, play hard type. Perhaps they are also quite athletic and usually very good at what they do. Sometimes they get into alcohol or drugs as a way of letting off steam. Then, perhaps because of the lack of a wide family structure it’s easy to fall into bad habits. Usually only the spouse will know - she’ll be the only one who can see the descent - but by the time it’s a problem she is often already the enemy. Then, there isn’t the support network that people would have back home to catch them,” she said.
She underlined that not all recreational drug users become addicts in need of treatment, but said the increasingly widespread social acceptability of drug use is narrowing the line between the two.
She added that cocaine addicts are not as common at Recovery Works as alcoholics, since there were fewer drug takers who had reached the “fairly desperate state” that drunks get to.
The number of people joining Recovery Works with drug and alcohol problems is not rising, she said, although she adds that during the financial crisis a number of newly unemployed professionals started to attend daytime recovery programs for the first time.
“I think they felt they finally had the time to do something about their problem,” she said.
At Cocaine Anonymous meetings in the city, attendance ranges anywhere from two or three people to ten, suggesting that the numbers of drug takers who hit bottom and get help are relatively few, even if recreational drug use is increasingly common.
And, to put the expatriate population in Hong Kong into context, it accounts for less than five per cent of the island's seven million population, including the large Filipino and Indonesian communities. Strip those out and the figures are only in the tens of thousands.
A former cocaine addict said the number of cases were stable, and that Hong Kong was not out of line with the situation in the West. “Addiction is a disease. If you have it, it doesn't matter where you are - Hong Kong the US, the UK - you'll feed your addiction until you get help. Some people can drink a bit of alcohol then stop when they've had enough. Some people just keep going - they are the addicts. Their environment doesn't make much difference in my experience,” he said.
However, unlike the West, Hong Kong has escaped the financial crisis relatively unscathed and the banking community has cash to burn again. HSBC, which carries out an annual survey of expatriates, noted that in 2010 more than half the 250 participants agreed that their economic conditions had improved, a far higher proportion than their counterparts in London or New York.
The study also reported that Hong Kong expatriates are relatively high earners - with 35% of them earning over US$200,000 - and that 75% of them are earning more since relocating.
In a bid to help employees with problems, several of the US investment banks have imported their Employee Assistance Program (EAP) to Hong Kong.
The system came into being because of America's strict discrimination laws, because it was feared that staff who needed treatment for drug, alcohol or other personal problems could face unfair treatment in the workplace if they sought help.
Through the scheme, a third party confidentially assesses staff in need of treatment and liaises with the bank's Human Resources department, simply informing them that the employee will be absent for a period of time.
“A lot of the banks here have EAPs. US companies spend so much on their employees, they want to ensure they do the best job,” said Schmitt.
“It gives staff a chance to get help if they need it. The company pays the EAP for their services but the EAP isn't part of the company. Sometimes employees get sent there by their bosses though. I think if an employee needed help once or twice the company will be supportive. After that, I'd doubt it. Also this service isn't really provided by any Asian or British or other European companies,” she added.
Human Dynamic, an EAP firm with offices across Asia and partners around the world lists a range of services on its website from tackling poor morale and stress in the workplace to treatment of more serious issues.
The firm which carries the tagline “Happy Employees will generate Happy Customers and Happy Shareholders” declined to comment on whether drug problems among employees are becoming a bigger issue in Hong Kong.
Among the bankers, there is widespread denial that anyone is partying harder now than they were in the 1980s. One former banker, turned recruitment consultant said that more people had “burned out or overdosed” in the 80s, unable to cope with the sudden wealth that the island created.
More than a decade before the colonial lights were switched off by Chris Patten in 1997, the English-speaking expat population in Hong Kong was already predicting the end of swinging Hong Kong.
In a 1986 Sunday Times magazine article entitled 'Jittery City', a variety of long-time residents predicted the demise of the entertainment industry, nudity and girlie bars.
Pat Sephton, described as a Liverpudlian former model who back then ran a Tsim Sha Tsui night club known as Bottoms Up told the newspaper there was “not a chance” that her girlie bar would be allowed to exist after 1997.
“I know they assure us nothing will change. But you remember what happened to Shanghai? You remember Blood Alley and all the girls in the clubs along The Bund? They stayed for a month or two, and then they were forced out. There's no way a communist administrator is going to allow men to ogle at naked girls”.
On the streets of Lan Kwai Fong or Wan Chai today however, it is clear that the party is still in full swing.
Tessa Thorniley, a freelance business and travel writer based in Shanghai. She writes for newspapers, magazines and websites including The Daily Mail, the South China Morning Post, the Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and Wallpaper.
Her previous articles for Danwei are Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa, land of a billion customers, Bankrupt schools and their fleeing foreign bosses and China's private healthcare racket.
Links and Sources
* The Daily Mail: Leading banker jumped to his death after snorting cocaine at welcome home party
* CNN: Lan Kwai Fong: From sweaty taverns to decadent discos
* For help with cocaine abuse: 1212 (Hong Kong) (24 Hour bilingual hotline +852 9483 2894)
* Cocaine Anonymous (Hong Kong) (+852 8101 1125)
Tags for this entry:
* banking
* , cocaine
* , crime
* , drugs
* , financial industry
* , Hong Kong
* , investment
* , police
###
Craig Stephen's This Week in China
Craig Stephen
Oct. 10, 2010, 8:12 p.m. EDT
Prada listing shows Hong Kong is height of fashion
Commentary: Dangers lurk in fickle new-listing market
By Craig Stephen
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) - News that Italian fashion house Prada is mulling an initial public offering in Hong Kong underscores the city-state’s place at the height of fashion for new listings. Not content with surpassing London, Shanghai and New York in funds raised this year, Hong Kong’s bourse is even pulling in top European fashion names.
Is this another signs asset markets in Hong Kong are spinning out of control in a glut of liquidity or just further evidence of the economic swing towards Asia?
Prada would certainly look a little out of step next to existing Hong Kong retail names such as Bossini, Giordano and Esprit. But perhaps this reflects the changing face of the city as a shoppers’ paradise. For the new mainland Chinese tourist, the draw card is not copy watches and street markets, but the chains of luxury brands selling their wares duty free. Prada’s move is also likely recognition of the growing importance of the Chinese consumer, which is on course to surpass Japan in household wealth in the next five years, according to a new report by Credit Suisse.
Still, the Italian brand will want to make sure it does not suffer an identity crisis, where listing in Hong Kong translates into “made in Hong Kong” or “made in China.” No doubt, a key consideration is the rich valuations and large investor appetite for new listings in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong has become the dumping ground for global liquidity, squeezed between unprecedented monetary easing in the West and speculative money flows exiting China. One illustration of the advantageous liquidity conditions is that Agricultural Bank of China (THE:HK:1288) (SHANGHAI:CN:601288) now trades at a 30% premium in Hong Kong to Shanghai after its mega dual listing three months ago. This all means Hong Kong is in the liquidity sweet spot for IPOs globally, where everyone tends to look better on the new listing catwalk.
This year, $23.9 billion has been raised from 53 IPOs, and Hong Kong is now preparing for the bumper $15 billion listing of AIG’s (NYSE:AIG) AIA arm.
Roubini calls on China to raise Its currency
Nouriel Roubini, Economics Professor and consultant, made famous for his 2005 prediction that home price speculation would sink the economy, sees currency battles spreading globally. He spoke to reporters at the IMF's annual meeting in Washington, DC.
In recent days, it appears the pace of money circulating in Hong Kong is accelerating. Last weekend, buyers splashed out 13 billion Hong Kong dollars ($1.68 billion) on new properties, while during the week, turnover on the stock market rose above HK$100 billion for only the second time since November last year, as the Hang Seng Index (THE:HK:HSI) reached a two-year high.
One element driving this is cheap money and negative real interest rates, with inflation running at 3%. For example, HSBC (NYSE:HBC) (THE:HK:5) in a recent press release lists its savings rates: $5,000, $50,000 or $1 million on account, all pay 0.001% interest. At the same time, the bank appears to be aggressively seeking to lend money, if the offers of no-fee cash advances in my mail box are anything to go by.
While these loose money conditions have supported the stock market, it has also led to growing controversy over high property prices and the risk of an asset bubble. Despite a series of anti-speculation measures by the government, there are few signs of a property slowdown. Rather, property stocks have been rallying strongly - Cheung Kong Holdings (THE:HK:1) (PINK:CHEUY) , property developer of Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing, is now up 25% since August.
This will provide an interesting backdrop as Chief Executive Donald Tsang gives his policy address on Wednesday, with the market looking for some direction on official thinking on the economy and asset prices. Perhaps the movement in developer prices tells us there will be little measures with teeth.
For many other Asian countries from Japan to Thailand, the big policy issue just now is the multi-year highs currencies are making against the dollar. And while China is receiving criticism from all quarters on its peg to the greenback, it is surprising how little attention the Hong Kong dollar peg gets. This is undoubtedly one factor contributing to capital flows as investors bet that if it does not move in tandem with the region, asset prices will take the strain.
In the meantime, macroeconomic conditions are undeniably favorable for Asian equities, note Nomura in a new strategy report. While valuations would normally be contracting as the market faces a slowdown in earnings momentum, a combination of negative real rates, hot-money inflows and rising price (assets and goods) are expanding the multiples.
Put another way, the ‘P’ is rising while the ‘E’ is declining. Little surprise then, new issues are making a beeline to Hong Kong, the most liquid and international of Asian markets.
Still, the investment banks notes these benign conditions might not last.
“The biggest risk for Asian markets is the rising probability of competitive devaluations in [the Group of Three major economies] disrupting monetary operations in Asia through capital inflows and higher local inflation.”
The answer, it seems, is to be on the watch for any reversal in capital flows which, like fashion trends and the market for IPOs, can be notoriously fickle.
Copyright © 2010 MarketWatch, Inc. All rights reserved.
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runway review
CHLOE
PARIS, October 11, 2000 -
VH1/VOGUE Fashion Awards Designer of the Year 2000
Stella McCartney certainly did not disappoint her legions of fabulous young fans who rely on Chloé for the season's hot new trends. But this season, in addition to delivering sexy new T-shirts and plunging bathing suits (with playful pineapple motifs), McCartney explored grown-up territory. Perhaps drawing inspiration from Schiaparelli's inventive chic, McCartney worked graphic horse prints (borrowed from Stubbs and Géricault) into loosely structured diagonal-seam dresses and beautiful jackets with a softly draped triangle shoulder. Skirts were long and relaxed, perfect when paired with lightweight, flouncy off-the shoulder tops. Wide-brim hats and dainty pillboxes with a tulle overlay gave the look a touch of '30s sophistication. More casual pieces included sexy jeans with zipper pockets and metallic horses galloping along the backside, and a T-shirt with strategically placed banana appliqués in the front and the words "Keep your bananas off my melons" in the back.
This was a very strong collection for McCartney, and one that confirms her considerable talent and potential as a major designer.
- By Armand Limnander
Stella McCartney Spring 2011 Ready-to-Wear
PARIS, October 4, 2010
By Nicole Phelps
How do you do the new longer lengths and not look mumsy? That was the puzzle Stella McCartney set out to solve in a collection that played to her strengths. Her answer-box pleats in back, a pair of slits up the front of each leg-was simple enough, but the results were very sexy in her signature breezy way. A silk dress in a vibrant citrus print (first bananas at Prada, now lemons and grapefruit at McCartney) was also slashed at the waist and back, and it had an easy chic that could make it the one thing in your closet you turn to again and again. It just might be the dress of the summer.
In contrast, a denim section of tunics and shorts in boxy shapes looked somewhat clunky. But as ever, McCartney had a lot of strong tailoring, slightly softened this season in a palette of faded pastels like rose, pistachio, and light blue. The other thing that made her suits look new was the cut of the pants. High-waisted, cropped, cuffed, and with a hint of a flare, they stood out in a month full of floor-scraping trousers.
And what of the red-carpet frocks for her front-row gal pals? The designer, who's expecting baby number four, skipped them this season. As an alternative, she showed a pair of double-breasted backless vests, totally on trend and totally McCartney. Salma and Liv would no doubt approve.
Prada by Sarah Mower
http://www.vogue.com/collections/spring-2011/prada/review/
Sunny, funny, very South American. Miuccia Prada-usually taken for one of fashion’s most intense and complex thinkers-was so far from feeling deep and intellectual for spring that she actually had a pair of bananas dangling from her ears. “I was interested in minimal and baroque. For me,” she said, gesturing at the sombreros, bright horizontal stripes, multi-colored fox stoles, wedged espadrilles, and cotton sundresses which were about to take to the runway, “this is a musical.”
If it wasn’t quite Carmen Miranda in The Gang’s All Here, this was another definite sign that straightforward, wearable, enjoyable fashion is back on the agenda. Their hair in slicked-down tango-dancer marcel waves, feet in Mary Janes elevated on layered, striped, espadrille wedges, and walking to a mix of tango- and flamenco-inflected music, the girls evoked a spirit that was Cuban deco, or somewhere thereabouts. Not that the exact geographical and historical references mattered-how could they, when prints involving monkeys and bananas were swinging along the runway in the form of flounced rumba skirts and bowling shirts, and when every other eye-popping, horizontally striped, scoop-backed sundress or plain cotton skirt-suit was so easy to imagine wearing on a summer’s day?
In some ways, it read as a return to the simple, clean-lined pieces for city living which first won Prada droves of working-women followers in the nineties-only now her pairings of pencil skirts and curved-shoulder jackets came mostly in vivid orange, green, or ultraviolet rather than black. Maybe that was the “minimalism” she was getting at-a reminder, in times when the nineties are being referenced in so many places, that she was the first to carve out that user-friendly template? Still, this is today, not 1994, and there’s a distinct sense of humor in the way she reclaimed that territory, thrusting cheerfully striped fur stoles (a knowing nod to the seventies/thirties glam trend of the season) and stripey bags into each girl’s hand.
Ultimately, this wasn’t the kind of Prada collection whose layers of meaning demand a Ph.D in cultural studies, art, or feminist politics to fathom. She’d applied her intelligence, instead, to making a pragmatic, balanced collection which ran from useful daywear to simple-sexy sunny-day dresses to decorative crochet-lace appliquéd shifts with shimmying bead-fringed hems. All of that was contained within the boundaries of Prada’s separate, self-drawn world, but in her way, she pointed out the same thing as Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs did with their shows in New York: It’s time fashion is fun again.
Prada Spring 2011 Ready-to-Wear
http://www.style.com/fashionshows/review/S2011RTW-PRADA/
MILAN, September 23, 2010
By Tim Blanks
Only Miuccia Prada could attach a label like "minimal baroque" to a collection whose references ranged from hospital scrubs to seventeenth-century cherubs to Jazz Age superwoman Josephine Baker. Fishing around for an alternative to "fresh," she herself came up with "brave, bold, and obvious"-that last one a typical head-spinner. Maybe there was something obvious in the sheer uplift of the solid blocks of primary color; the jungle prints and striped sombreros; the straightforward summery-ness of a spaghetti-strapped, ruffle-hemmed dress striped in orange and pink. But there was also more than enough of Prada's twisty-ness to boost this collection into her already chock-full pantheon of greats. Those cherubs, for a start, plucked from a curlicued baroque interior and all mixed up with bananas and naive monkeys in an exuberantly cartoonish print that looked like something lifted from a poster for a Josephine Baker performance at the Folies Bergère in the twenties. (The models' finger-waved hair also echoed Baker's.) But there was nothing cartoonish about a supremely elegant white shift with a Baker-like silhouette sinuously snaking up and out of a forest of multicolored curlicues.
Prada delivered electric hits of orange, green, blue, and radioactive violet in deliberately plain cotton suits, like the most (extra)ordinary uniforms. That theme continued in all the stripes. Prisoner, postman, sailor, orderly: The uniforms might have taken a cue from her last-equally special-men's collection, but they were also an evolution of Fall's spectacularly womanly shapes. This time around, however, the glamour was raw, amplified by the pop-colored stoles the models were toting, the graphic silent-movie makeup by Pat McGrath, and the severely sensual outfits in basic black that closed the show as the soundtrack crackled with the static of an old tango record. Miuccia's message was crystal-clear. As she said backstage, banana earrings vibrating: "It's time to be bold." And that's one maxim that, with any luck, will rub off on the world at large.
Prada Spring 2011 Menswear
http://www.style.com/fashionshows/review/S2011MEN-PRADA
MILAN, June 20, 2010
By Tim Blanks
What was that set that the Prada audience walked in on today? Rows of massive concrete columns held apart two huge metal grilles, forming a boxy industrial space that could have been an underground car park, or the foundations of a skyscraper, or the bowels of the Battlestar Galactica. But then the lights snapped on with a sizzle, the mutated pulse of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" filled the room, and the show started with a lean blue suit, white shirt, and tie-the traditional male business uniform in all its three-buttoned glory.
As things progressed, uniforms from around the globe emerged as the theme. Backstage, Miuccia Prada explained that she had wanted everything as simple as possible in terms of fabrication, construction, and silhouette. So she used cotton, the hardest-working fabric in the world. From there she landed on the idea of working clothes, with a number being made from denim, the hardest-working cotton of all. Denim was used for hospital scrubs, layered over a shirt and tie of the same fabric, and was also cut into some of those lean three-buttons, one with white contrast stitching.
There were blues other than denim blues that evoked other uniforms: postmen, sailors (lots of boatnecks). Potent hits of color, meanwhile, were intended to suggest uniforms from other countries, the cross-cultural crush being a Prada signature. Striped shirts even looked a little like sports kit, especially in tandem with the baggy shorts that gave the collection an added airiness. Shoes took the weight this season with superthick soles made from sandwiching other soles together: wing-tips, espadrilles, trainers.
The week in Milan so far has been marked by heavy-ish collections that seem to pay little mind to the season for which they're intended. True, the weather here has been laughably grim for the start of summer, but Prada at least offered clothes that were light, playful, and optimistic, culminating in bright striped cotton sweaters that said it can only get better from here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/fashion/24iht-rprada.html
September 23, 2010, 3:55 pm
Monkey Business at Prada
By CATHY HORYN
The world can always use a little more glamour, and that was essentially the underlying message at the Prada spring 2011 show here in Milan tonight, set as it was on a raised runway covered in steel mesh. But this is Prada, and no one is more questioning of glamour - and the banality of luxury - than Miuccia Prada.
So she tossed glamour a banana peel.
Start with the fact that the clothes were all in Japanese cotton, from the suits to the black, ruffle-neck dresses that closed the show, and the shapes were comprehensibly basic - almost a uniform. The palette swings from Seuss to rugby, from sweet to jock. The models’ pinheads evoke the 1920s, with silver-blue eye shadow, yet they have thick, masculine brows. They’re carrying fox fur stoles, some striped like a tiger’s tail, and monkeys are scrambling up the sides of some of the dresses, a gesture as silly as a night club swizzle stick.
Backstage, Ms. Prada, who had on a gray pullover with a checked skirt and a pair of dangling banana earrings, offered musicals as a reference, but it was perhaps easier and simpler to see glamour, and the contrast to masculine uniforms, like the suit or the athletic shirt. What I liked, aside from the color, was the use of cotton, albeit some very special Japanese kinds. Fendi also had lots of cotton - not technical stuff, not chiffon imitating nylon. And no hard edges. Baroque monkeys probably appeal less to Ms. Prada’s sense of humor than to her appreciation of history, and her way of bringing it forward in fashion.
I also liked the last few dresses in the show - black cotton with a pie-crust ruffle at the neck and elbow-length sleeves. It’s the little black dress revised.
Milan Fashion Week Spring 2011, Miuccia Prada, Prada
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2010/09/prada_just_had_a_chiquita_bana.html
September 23, 2010
Prada: Banana Bright
By SUZY MENKES
MILAN - The fur scarves were so bright they popped off the runway: DayGlo orange, shocking pink and bright green. Something for foxy showgirls to wind around perfectly plain black dresses.
For this was Prada , home of shock, surprise and awe that one designer can have such courage and daring - yet create such simple clothes. Yes, Miuccia Prada herself wore dangling banana earrings to take her bow and showed dresses printed with a monkey prancing in a baroque frame of greenery.
But the designer also cut a new, longer silhouette, and reinvented a new suit with elongated jacket, over-the knee slim skirt in pervasive horizontal stripes and purposeful platform sneakers in more bright colors.
“I started from the simplicity of the men’s collection - but I wanted it to be like a musical as a symbol of boldness,” said Ms. Prada backstage, where the sandwiches were as brightly colored as the bikinis of a Brazilian beach.
But, of course, not even the banana-patterned shirt or Mexican embroideries on a white dress were referring to any hot-blooded South American scenario but to the burning imagination in the Prada mind.
As they marched out on the shiny silver runway under a metal structure that looked like the roof of a city parking garage, the strong colors and geometric stripes were just dabs of brightness on something plain.
Ms. Prada talked about her fascination with the baroque and the way that it undulated from Sicily to South America - hence curlicue sunglasses and sombreros hanging from the nape beside the two tidy little buns of hair.
The Prada message was for color, optimism and imagination, but it was also basically streamlined, using cotton fabric for slender striped dresses.
As the cheers rang out for this exceptional collection, the audience knew that nothing in fashion is so difficult to achieve as a powerful idea perfectly executed.
Prada Shuts Down Runway Rumors
http://www.wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/prada-shuts-down-runway-rumors-3308699
Posted Monday September 27, 2010
Prada firmly denied speculation Monday that it would alter or nix the spring/summer collection it paraded on the Milan runway last week. The rumor went that Prada’s chief executive officer Patrizio Bertelli was unhappy with the colorful and graphic range, which received good reviews from critics and retailers. According to sources, Prada cancelled some writing appointments in Milan for American retailers, saying the company would bring an enhanced offering to New York at the end of October.
http://jakandjil.com/blog/?p=4910
Prada's New Label | Jessica Bumpus | 29 September 2010
http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/daily/100929-prada-country-of-origin-labels-.aspx
MIUCCIA PRADA is introducing new "country of origin" labels to her designs - taking into account where exactly the garment has been manufactured and from where it has been inspired.
"It's taking away the hypocrisy," explains Prada of the idea which will work to recognise that although 85 per cent of the brand's goods are made in Italian factories, tapping into international artisans is not something to be ashamed of. So, a dress featuring Chikan embroidery, specific to Muslim India, will be labelled "Prada Milano, Made in India".
"It's something I have been thinking about for a long time and there are many different aspects. 'Made in Italy' - who cares? It's not a brand strength if you have to defend your work. Mine is a political statement and it comes from a personal appreciation of originality. You have to embrace the world if you want to live in it now," she tells the International Herald Tribune.
The first results can be seen in the following projects: "PRADA Made in Scotland", a collection of tartan wool kilts from the original workshops that specialise in centuries-old manufacturing and weave techniques; "PRADA Made in India", a collection of entirely handmade garments from the workshops that specialise in the aforementioned Chikan; "PRADA Made in Japan", a collection of jeans produced by Dova denim manufacturer; and "PRADA Made in Peru", a collection of alpaca wool knitwear using artisanal techniques.
Prada's new move takes the opposite approach to a new law designed to set exact guidelines as to what "Made in Italy" constitutes - currently the entire garment or just part of it.
http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2010/09/prada_just_had_a_chiquita_bana.html