Now Tang is out to storm New York. To open his new Madison Avenue emporium in late November, he plans a three-day gala launch, complete with lion dancers and Peking Opera singers, parties, a premiEre of Wayne Wang’s new movie and a who’s who of Chinese luminaries rubbing elbows with New York’s fashion elite. ““Don’t expect Chinatown,’’ says Tang, 43, brandishing his trademark Cohiba cigar. ““This will be very avant-garde.''
High-end Asian style is already catching on in New York. Chinese designers such as Vivienne Tam and Anna Sui are already hot properties on the fashion circuit. Restaurants serving Asian cuisine, such as Nobu and Omen, are attracting the city’s high fliers, from supermodels to Wall Street hotshots. ““People are bored to death with minimalism,’’ says David Wolfe, a fashion trend-spotter at the Doneger Group. ““Asian design has always been about color and the ornate details on the clothes.''
Theatrical and brash, Tang is used to the role of cultural comprador. His grandfather was a wealthy bus-company owner and philanthropist who wanted little David to have the right pedigree. Tang was sent to school in England at 14 and picked up an upper-crust British accent. A fixture in British high society, he’s affectionately known in the jet set as ““Tango.’’ In a recent interview, the usually exuberant Tang was stunned by the death of Princess Diana, his good friend. They spoke by phone the day before she died, to discuss her appear- ance at a cancer fund-raiser in Hong Kong later this month.
His Anglophilia hasn’t hurt Tang since the Chinese took over sovereignty of Hong Kong on July 1. Perhaps that’s because, for all his Britishness, Tang describes himself as ““passionately Chinese.’’ He parades around Hong Kong in the silky dark robes of a Chinese mandarin and sponsors readings of traditional Chinese poetry. The Chineseness of his product line, however kitschy, typifies the current resurgence of pride in Chinese culture among Chinese around the world.
Tang will have to reach well beyond that clientele to succeed in New York. France’s premier department store, Galeries Lafayette, opened to great fanfare in 1991 at a prime midtown location in the Trump Tower–and closed three years later. Since then, another non-American retailer, Takashimaya, has had success with a new Japanese department store on Fifth Avenue, and the stock-market boom has buoyed upscale stores all over the city. But the competition’s fierce, and the prime real estate will cost Tang and his investors, the South African firm Richemont, a cool $2 million a year. The huge, cathedral-like space, with its 24-foot ceilings, will be a sweeping showplace for Tang’s deco light fixtures and oak and mahogany display cases. A restaurant on the top floor will serve Chinese delicacies and replicate the languorous ambience of Tang’s successful China Club in Hong Kong.
Fashion analyst Wolfe says that China becomes a major influence in Western fashion about once every 25 years: in the 1950s, in the 1920s and at the turn of the last century. Tang has a good shot at riding that rhythm–but how long will he last? ““Our products are more than Chinese-emporium souve- nirs,’’ he insists. ““We are a lifestyle brand.’’ Maybe–if your lifestyle blends East and West as seamlessly as David Tang’s.
