Dear Shaded Viewers,
Literally I’ve just walked in the door. I am a bit exhausted to say the least but wanted to give you a little news about my press trip to the first Bangkok fashion week. I did want to lifeblog you images along the way but remembering my SFR bill from the gumball rally I decided to try a little Lifeblogging withdrawal or should I say restraint. As my dear friend Robb Young knows, I am a lifeblog addict and if he had been on the trip with me I most probably could not have restrained myself. But he wasn’t and I did. IT would be thrilling if Nokia or SFR decided to sponsor this blog but until then…discipline.
We arrived, went to the hotel and an hour later we were at the press conference to open the Bangkok fashion week. The first person that I ran into was Jeannette Chang the Senior Vice President and International Director of Hearst Magazine. We had not seen each other in at least 15 years and it was a real pleasure to find her there in Bangkok. 
Jeannette Chang in white and the opening show by H.R.H. Princess Sirivannavarinariratana
all of the above designs are from H.R.H. Princess Sirivannavarinariratana
The one sure thing that I can say about Bangkok fashion week is that I’ve never experienced a more enthusiastic audience in all of my global fashion travels. It was quite refreshing to see such passion. The H.R.H. Princess is 17 and doing her first year at fashion school. When her sister entered the tent everyone stood up out of respect. The designer herself was given countless bouquets and a thundering applause. Designers such as Westwood, Cavalli, Dolce, Galliano came to mind.
The day ended with a lovely dinner outside, well some of us were outside. I stopped by Jeanette’s table and met Stephen Gan’s brother and his friend Jonathan. They are two of the funniest people that I’ve met but more on that later and the possible book called Fashion’s outer limits. One idea is to have Andrew, Jonathan and J take the place of Stephen, James and Cecilia and cover the globe, willing to fly business instead of first class and to go to places where Stephen would never dare. Andrew Gan is sitting across from me he is a banker that writes a fashion/lifestyle column in Manilla which is known to be a bit on the acerbic side. Remind me one day to tell you his elevator and Prada story…
The next day a few of us decided to visit the museum and the Grand Palace. It was the Queen’s birthday on August 12th but she likes to celebrate the event for the entire month.
I didn’t really mind the looks from the uniformed children, in fact some were quite entertained or entertaining.
Noriko Usami from Baycrew*s Co., Ltd and Lio Miura from Kanematsu Italia S.p.A. on our outing to the Grand Palace.
Along with the collection Senada Theory, Grey had the strongest international appeal to the press and the buyers above images from Grey, below is the finale of Senada Theory.
The designers and director of Grey and in between Mr. Grey and I is Anna Limpichart, the assistant executive producer of the whole event. DP and Nanda, the beautiful face of l’Oreal. It was funny after the Grey show Nanda came up to me and said that we had met at Chez Omar a few weeks ago. Nanda is l/2 German and half Thai. If you are wondering why there are not more fashion show pictures it is because they kept telling me that I was not allowed to shoot, if the press cannot shoot, then I wonder who can?
Here I am with my new friends and Romeo, from Showroom Romeo in Paris led an exchange between the buyers, press and the designers. A moment of exchange between Michael from Paris’s boutique L’Eclaireur and Romeo. To get a better look at some of the designers represented in the Bangkok fashion week as well as other local design talent visit the site for the inspiration store playground! http://www.playgroundstore.co.th/ and http://www.geo.co.th/. One of the funniest nights of the whole trip was when a group of us, Greg Niebel, Daniel from Seibu H.K, Chaco from Romeo Paris, Elaine from Callioppe, Pedro from Porto, Nori from Romeo Paris and Joy Yoon, writer, photographer, multi disciplinarian, decided we were starving and tried to have dinner. We lived a surrealistic moment at the fish palace where Greg, Joy and Pedro are standing and ended up eating dinner at the 7 11. I’ll try to post a short film on that evening later this week.
The finale shot is from the collection of a family of opium growers that changed direction and developed textiles and became designers. I was quite touched when the entire atelier came out on the runway after the show. The diagonal line is Playground. I heard that the collection Issue was very good, but…I missed it.
To be continued
