Taipei Fashion Week dialed up the excitement with four days of runway shows and the hope is, this is the start of something big.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/12/14
By: Jules Quartly

Taiwan fashion was the debutante at its own ball last week. The coming-out party featured more than 40 of the country’s brightest and best designer talents, backed by the Ministry of Culture.

The inaugural Taipei Fashion Week at the prepossessing Taiwan Traditional Theater Center (臺灣戲曲中心) was a triumph of form over function. Since the goal was to be seen and heard, rather than sell clothes, this could be counted as a win.

Fashion lovers, dressed almost uniformly in black, congregated in droves for the shows, which ran for four days from Dec. 6-9. Their images filled the evening news cycles and there was decent coverage in the local press. Inevitably, there was a lot of big talk about a brand-new era for Taiwan design.

Yet the shows, full of vim and invention, lacked a certain substance. The focus on being “culturally kinetic” and Taiwan-centric was kind of dated, a bit like constructivism in the desire to package local art and design for social and commercial purposes. Laudable enough, but more lipstick on the same pig if you’ve seen it all before.
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