Local Design Takes Root
Despite boasting one the world's most prominent art markets and a reputation as the hub of creativity in China, Beijing has long lacked a design scene. The past year, however, has seen an explosion of design boutiques throughout the capital. Long impressed with boutique expat favorites like Plastered T-Shirts, we set out to explore the new boutiques growing up in Beijing's emerging design scene.

by Michael Engstrom

Lost and Found

A 30-year-old, pale olive-green Qingyun office chair is not normally a source of inspiration, but to Paul Gelinas, co-owner of the design boutique Lost and Found, "there is nothing about this chair that doesn’t excite me."

Gelinas and his business partner Xiao Mao have revamped the blase by discovering the uber-progressive in the totally neglected. The two visionaries behind Lost and Found, which sells their innovative clothing and furniture as well as vintage collectibles, draw inspiration from the classic, danwei styles of China's recent past.

"It is important to look at modern China as a source of inspiration," Gelinas insists. By soliciting Chinese demolition companies to preserve the things that would otherwise be ignored, Gelinas is actively "focusing on correcting mistakes in a country where mistakes are many."

Though their designs use high-end fabrics and imported springs, Gelinas and Xiao are consciously green: The wood used for their furniture is largely secondhand, acquired by selectively purchasing from dumps throughout rural China. Their boutique is itself an original construction, yet all the wood used came from the structure that formerly occupied the site (a bankrupt dumpling shop). Even disregarding the shop and the furniture’s intriguing origins, the designs speak for themselves. Though doubtlessly Chinese in nature, Gelinas’designs also reflect a Scandinavian influence. Original down sofas run from ￥3,000 to ￥5,000. Chests go for ￥2,500. This is a dynamic boutique, however, replete with more than just furnishings. Random antique appliances, street signs, mirrors and other trinkets have all been salvaged for sale at the shop. Tea, notebooks and authentic works of local painters are also available for purchase.

Gelinas even contracted a factory on the outskirts of town to manufacture 10,000 glass thermoses (￥58-98), all hand-painted in an endearingly retro Chinese style. The east wall of the shop is lined with garments as lovingly designed and constructed as anything one finds on Fifth Avenue (￥200-700; T-shirts are ￥138). The clothing, designed by Xiao Mao and constructed from scratch under her strict supervision, is made using fabric produced exclusively for the store, and many of the finished pieces are left undyed for a gorgeous overall effect.

Lost and Found is a conscious effort at unpretentious and healthy design, based in history while pointing towards the future. "I want my designs to be picked up in 50 years and have the same effect on people that what I pick up now has on me," Gelinas says. "The idea came in thinking about where to go for the things I want to buy, and then making that store."

All Dolled Up

Grifted
Say the word "boutique" in Beijing and most immediately think Nanluoguxiang. This urban bohemian zone is the hutong heart of the capital’s design community, and Grifted was one of its first established design houses. Handmade by local residents, Grifted's accessories, T-shirts and home decor are immediately familiar to those who live in the capital.

"I like to express my sense of humor in my design," declares Grifted's founder and designer, P.P. Indeed, it is difficult to refute the comedic charm of her designs. One t-shirt bears the typical laotou of Beijing's hutongs, with his wifebeater pulled up past the stomach, grinning away with a silly "Ni hao! Hello!" (￥100). Another mimics no-smoking signs-except this T-shirt bans spitting rather than inhaling (also ￥100). More intriguing is Grifted's collection of "Socialist Dolls" (including Mao, Lenin, Marx, Fidel and Che, priced from ￥55-99).

The carefully considered playfulness of Grifted is intimately hemmed into Beijing’s cultural fabrics so much that it would be shocking if someone who had never been to Beijing could decipher Grifted's zaniness and laugh along with us.

Manic Organic

Mu Handicraft
Mu Handicraft is driven by handmade creativity, a Chinese twist on the communal hippie craft studios of the West. Mu’s two boutiques (one on Nanlugo Guxiang and the other in Houhai) were created by a five Midi School classmates who wanted to find a financially viable outlet for their creative pursuits. The material beauty of their handmade notebooks, bags and sculptures are distant from other contemporary designers' work, closer to the earth and to their native culture.

"We design practical things for everyday life," explains designer Li Bo. Not only practical, their work evidences an elegant artistic finesse. Nearly every design is an homage to traditional Chinese culture, paintings, patterns and imagery. Based on Mu's Do-It-Yourself approach, their notebook covers, showcasing Ming paintings and prints, are made of handmade paper and printed with an ink jet printer (￥5-60). Genuine leather variations are pricier (￥20-260), but stand the tests of time. As Beijing skyscrapers rise higher, the men of Mu are keeping themselves grounded to local history and utility.

To a Tee

ENO
The latest and coolest commercial addition to the shopping nucleus of Beijing's young fashionistas, Xi Dan’s Joy City, is as colorful and loud as modern design boutiques can get. Though the majority of ENO's 25 designers are from Shanghai, Beijing brains are quickly making their mark on the boutique’s product lines. The fashion of ENO is deceptively happy, but often hints at a feeling of urban desperation.

"My illustrations are an attempt to distinguish myself from the cut-and-paste design of others. I do this by incorporating personal feelings into my designs," states Beijing artist Yan Wei. One of Yan’s four T-shirts designed for Eno exhibits an eyeless schoolgirl whose arms morph silently into rainclouds (￥180-220).

Other ENO designers' clothing and accessories may cater to a wide variety of consumers, but they all seem to come from the future. Urbanity, recklessness and uncurbed attitude is what this super-boutique is all about.

Box Rebellion

Fengguo Box
The student stomping grounds of Zhongguancun, “China’s Silicon Valley,” is one of the last places Beijingers look to for cutting-edge design and fashion. Pocketed like a microchip of creativity in the Zhongguancun Pedestrian Street Mall, the design collective Fengguo Box demonstrates that the area is more than just Microsoft and Google. Fengguo's dozens of innovative minds insist that Beijing can be on par with Seoul and Torino, and they intend to get there by using more sensitive approaches to design.

"I try to incorporate literature and language into my designs, which focus on women’s value in society," explains Dian Hu Mao, one of Fengguo's leading designers, an abstract concept that is hard to grasp without seeing her products. The most arresting of them are the pink pillows, in the shape of the naked female midriff, which she crochets herself. Other Fengguo designers' work may not be so risque, but their range is often wildly imaginative.

TALA has an outstanding curriculum vitae in design. She studied at Qinghua and has won international design competitions in Paris. Through her experiences she believes that as a Chinese designer, people expect something tangibly Chinese in her inventions. In brilliant compliance with these expectations, TALA uses traditional Chinese minority cultures as a source of inspiration and contemporizes it. The result is fascinating: In looking at her collection of women's jewelry, one hardly notices that often the necklace's centerpiece is made solely of buttons or shells.

To join the Fengguo Box collective, designers' products first undergo a democratic qualitative review, after which designers can rent a “box” in the store for as little as ￥200 per month. With such a democratic philosophy, a vast range of designs can be found. One of the most eye-catching is a box filled with meticulously hand-painted rocks: Originally worn smooth by water, they are now made surreal by the artist’s brush. There is a box for shoes, a box for Lego design and a box for electronic design. The possibilities are inexhaustible.

Fengguo is an appropriate metaphor for design in Beijing. There are many designers, many products and even more ideas. But it is still in the growth process, still young like the innovative minds that compose it. Closing out our interview, TALA repeated the same ideological statement heard at both Mu and ENO: "Design is going to develop in Beijing, but it's hard to say how. We just want to help up-and-coming designers make their way."

Details:

Lost and Found (Tel: 6401-1855, Add: 42 Guozijian, http://www.lost-and-found.cn), Grifted (Tel: 8404-4809, Add: 32 Nanluoguxiang, http://www.grifted.com.cn), Mu Handicraft (Tel: 8404-3217, Add: 99 Nanluoguxiang/ 2 Yandaixiejie, Web: http://www.craftfx.com), ENO (Tel: 5971-6233, Add: 51A, Joy City Mall in Xidan., Web: http://www.eno.cn), Fengguo Box (Tel: 6357-6004 ext. 128, Add: Zhongguancun Pedestrian Street, http://www.fengguo.com.cn), The Thing (Tel: 5971, Add: 41-41, Joy City at 131 Xidan North St, Web: http://www.thething.cn)

The Thing

Shanghai’s premier t-shirt shop arrives in Beijing with tongue planted firmly in cheek
Founded in 2005 by five young Shanghai designers, The Thing finally opened shop in Beijing in early April. Though the studio sells a range of original bags, shoes and hats, its T-shirts are stealing hearts with their tongue-and-cheek slogans and uber-cute illustrations. We asked The Thing to help explain some of its recent top-selling shirt designs.

“This shirt says, ‘Build a harmonious society.’ And so, we illustrated a black cat police sergeant and a one-ear mouse trying to make friends.”

“This one shows an old tree playing Wii with a single-eyed monster. Want to lose your weight and keep a good figure? Then you should play Wii.”

“‘So傻’means ‘So dumb.' 'So天真’ means ‘So innocent.’ This one’s a parody on the recent nude photo scandal that we’re sure you’ve heard about.”

“This comes from memories of eye exercises we did every day as students. Chinese call bags under one's eyes ‘panda eyes.’ So, the idea is a panda is doing the eye exercises to release the dark pouches.”