Founder's Interview｜Taoray Wang：From Tokyo to London, From Shanghai to New York
June 5,2017
This is Luxe.CO’s second interview with Taoray Wang. She has just finished launching her eponymous brand’s collection at New York Fashion Week, for the sixth time in a row. However, things have been slightly different this time. The mainstream media are unusually enthusiastic about Taoray Wang’s latest collection. This is because Tiffany Trump, the youngest daughter of Donald Trump, is a dedicated fan of this brand. This was the second time that Tiffany has watched Wang’s show as her guest. Her presence has elicited curiosity about this emerging Chinese designer label.
In response to the growing amount of attention she is receiving, Wang reveals that she doesn’t have any plans for promotion on a large scale: “My intention is to provide high-quality products and services, making the brand successful by word of mouth.”
In fact, when Taoray Wang launched her first collection in New York she received very little media exposure. Journalists hadn’t noticed the designer’s work until earlier this year – when Tiffany Trump attended Donald Trump’s inauguration wearing a garment by her.
When asked why she had chosen New York, Wang’s answer was simple: “I like the people in New York.” She still remembers her first time wandering the streets of New York, listening to the fast-paced clicking of the high-heels of professional women. Wang, who is 49 this year and has been travelling the world since her adolescence, says, “compared to those who became famous at a young age, or those who were brave and combative youngsters, I think that my rich experience makes me more stable. After so many years in the business, I have more trustworthy instincts.”
Among the four main global fashion weeks, New York Fashion Week is the closest to the market. Someone once wrote, “Ready-to-wear is the soul of New York fashion”. Without a doubt, New York Fashion Week fits with Wang’s customer group, designs and brand image. However, taking the first step is always hard. When Taoray Wang’s first season collection launched in 2014, it didn’t fill the 400-person venue where the show was held. The PR company had to stand on the door and invite people to come in and watch the show. The media took her collection for granted and assumed that it was just another “Chinese style” brand. However, Wang uses traditional Shanghai handcrafted tailoring techniques to create garments with a first-class modern design and excellent wearability, making her collection appeal to every audience.
After her the fifth season, the organiser of New York Fashion Week, IMG Group started to recommend Wang as a trendsetter. At the launch of the Taoray Wang 2017 AW collection, the 700-seater venue was full. After launching five collections in a low-key way, Wang has finally seen the first turning point for her brand.
Torah insists that Taoray Wang’s catwalk shows are dedicated to her customers. In fact, her first customers came from the audiences at her shows. On her client list are the names of several high-profile Chinese professionals working on Wall Street, including, for example, Ida Liu, the managing director of New York Citi Private Bank, and Susan Bo, a portfolio manager at J.P. Morgan Investment Management, Inc. However, the client who draws the most attention is still Tiffany Trump.
In 2016, Tiffany Trump saw Taoray Wang’s lookbook at a friend’s place and fell in love with her designs. She contacted Wang’s team and asked to attend the label’s catwalk show. On 12th September she sat in the front row with several of her friends. On the 27th of the same month, she chose to wear a dress from Taoray Wang to attend the first debate between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. For Trump’s inauguration ceremony on 20th January 2017, she again consulted Wang and decided to wear a white double-breasted coat. During the AW17 New York Fashion Week, she was once again a front-row guest at the Taoray Wang catwalk show, together with her mother and boyfriend.
“I might have underestimated the influence of social media. Because of the public’s interest in Tiffany Trump, media organisations have delved into her preference for our garments. As a result, the brand has received a massive amount attention and a huge number of enquiries, despite the fact that I’ve never used her patronage for promotional purposes,” said Wang, during the 2016 Luxe.CO Global Fashion Innovation and Investment Forum, at which she was a guest speaker.
Wang is a low-key designer who hides behind her brand. After her shows, she always takes a deep bow quickly, lowering her head, and then rushes backstage. Because of this, her team always complains that it’s difficult to get a clear photo of her at such important events. Taoray Wang is still not a retail brand, despite launching nearly three years ago. It has never been promoted on a large scale. This is partly due to Wang’s shy personality and partly due to her confidence in the brand, which comes from her experience as a designer for many years.
Does the designer make the brand, or does the brand make the designer? Wang told us her answer to this question: “The designer doesn’t represent the brand he or she creates. When the designer is creating the brand, the brand is also creating the designer.” However, after many years in the fashion business, Wang is not just a designer anymore. She attaches great importance to the brand’s customer group and its market positioning.
Wang defines herself as a stylist of her customers. She likes observing people and whenever someone she looks up to wears her clothes, she is very happy. “Women normally have massive wardrobes filled with clothes, so we don’t just sell clothes. Instead, we provide a quality service that is similar to haute couture.” Here she’s referring to her semi-customised service, which sits between luxury ready-to-wear ranges and haute couture. Although the garments have already been designed, they are made in accordance with each client’s individual demands, so a lot of communication, fittings and adjustments take place during the making process.
Wang puts the quality of her garments and services first. After launching her first collection, she was forced to turn away some customers because of a shortage of staff. After the catwalk show for her sixth season’s collection, the global attention has brought increasing interest from customers and a huge number of orders. However, Wang has chosen to put a hold on accepting orders, instead flying back to China to polish her products.
Wang knows Taoray Wang will never become a large-scale ready-to-wear brand. Therefore, alongside her second season’s collection, she launched another label, named Taoray Taoray, which has a modern and relaxed style. With a different market position to Taoray Wang, Taoray Taoray is more appealing to younger customers and is more affordably priced, with items priced between RMB 1480 and 2980 (£150 and £300 approximately). This new brand will start to sell globally this September.
Above: Taoray Taoray Lookbook
It’s not easy to create an international high-end designer brand. Previously Wang was the creative designer of the fashion brand Broadcast: Bo. Its holding company, Ribo Group, was a powerful backer when Wang first started Taoray Wang. More than 10 years ago, the chairman of Ribo, Weidong Wang, made the bold decision to appoint Wang, a creative director at that time, as the managing director of Broadcast: Bo and strongly supported her controversial plan to rejuvenate the brand. Over the next 11 years, Wang held both of the roles and led the label through two successful transformations, making Broadcast: Bo one of the best-known Chinese fashion brands. During her time at the head of the brand, Wang increased the number of stores from around 100 to around 800, creating revenue of RMB 2.5 billion.
From the managing director of Broadcast: Bo to the founder of her own brand, Wang admits that she can now appreciate the pressures and difficulties Weidong Wang felt when he started his career. However, her educational background as a history student has equipped her with a broad understanding, which also helps her to stand out in the world of fashion.
About Taoray Wang
Taoray Wang graduated from one of the top Japanese fashion schools, Tokyo Mode Gakuen, before becoming an assistant designer for Koshino Junko, a well-known Japanese fashion designer. Later, she was appointed as the chief designer for British retail fashion brand Rebel Belle London, where she worked for 4 years. In 2004, Tao joined Ribo Group and became the creative director, and then the managing director. She founded her label, Taoray Wang, in 2014. Currently, she remains a board member of Ribo Group and a design consultant for Broadcast: Bo.
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