Designing Women: A West Windsor Family Melds China and Fashion Fashion
by Euna Kwon Brossman
The fabled Silk Road linked China to Europe starting in the Middle Ages and provided the stuff of myth and legend for centuries. Just the name conjures up images of Marco Polo and his adventurers leading caravans laden with oriental spices and silks – beautiful, flowing silks designed to adorn emperors and kings. China became renowned the world over for its unusually fine and luxurious materials.
Lotusa, Inc.- the brainchild of West Windsor clothing designer Nancy Lee, now headed by her daughter, Shirley Fang – brings the Silk Road back to prominence in the United States with a distinctive women’s clothing label, Silk Box. A La Mode, a boutique in West Trenton, at 600 1/2 Bear Tavern Road, is holding a Silk Box trunk show, Saturday, June 19, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Silk Box’s fall samples will be available, and customers can place orders in their size. The event will also feature Silk Box ready-to-wear items.
Silk Box specializes in novelty silks and brocades. In ancient China these heavier materials were used mostly for home decorations like wall hangings, murals, and bedding. Silk Box uses modern technology to spin a lighter, more comfortable weave, and has adapted traditional Chinese designs.
“”The clothes will appeal to the woman who is stylish, artistic, not afraid of color, and comfortable with their fashion tastes and statements,”” says Shirley Fang, the 26-year-old head of the company. “”We’re not trying to chase trends; we’re trying to set them in our own way, and we’re emphasizing the quality of our fabrics. We’re also taking a very traditional Chinese craft and trying to adapt it to a more modern setting. Our customer is usually very well educated, has an interest in other cultures, or has a very artistic sensibility.””
I caught up with Fang last month at the Nouveau Collective trade show at the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan. The show draws designers and manufacturers who turn the hotel into a giant fashion showroom where the fashion industry’s power brokers – the buyers – go to look for the latest clothing for boutiques, catalogues, and department stores.
Fang takes me on a stroll along the trade floor to the Silk Box booth, explaining that the company carries two distinct lines of clothing. The basic line is casual, consisting of capri pants, jean-style jackets, classic-cut shirts, and the like, all aimed at the woman who wants everyday wear with style. The second line is the couture apparel. It is high fashion with a bold statement, the designs traditionally based on more ethnic elements.
At the booth, racks of beautifully designed clothes showcase breathtaking gossamer fabrics and slightly heavier but buttery soft textures. A stand-collar jacket is made from a silk rayon blend. There are linen brocades and an Italian-style pattern made of lightweight taffeta. A Mandarin jacket is expertly cut from chartreuse tulip linen with an organza lining. The jacket also comes in a shimmering pumpkin color and is reversible – the wholesale price is $70 dollars, and it retails for $140.
I am seduced by all this exquisite clothing, including a French cuff jacket made from wild rose iridescent doupioni silk, similar to shantung or Thai silk – the fabric’s rich tones practically leap out with a three-dimensional feel. My eye alights on a corselette blouse with an empire waist made from peach doupioni, then a silk organza jacket that can be paired with matching solid silk shells, then a silk rayon capri pant suitable for casual wear or it can be dressed up with a dressier top. It wholesales for $60 and retails for $120.
At the show the minimum purchase is three pieces per color per style, but a large order is what anybody in the fashion business, Fang included, always keeps her fingers crossed for. The company’s one-of-a kind couture items are quite reasonably priced; for example, a jacket will retail for $200 to $300.
While a trade show like the Nouveau Collective is old hat for Fang by now, she still remembers doing her first trade show at the age of 15 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York. “”I had no clue what I was doing. But we were first of a kind, so we were lucky because people just found their way to us and came. Our first trade show was a huge success. We were packed with people.””
Fang, a chic, petite woman with fine bone structure, was born on Long Island and moved to West Windsor when she was five. She graduated from West Windsor Plainsboro High School in 1995 and went to Brown University where she majored in biochemistry, with a strong emphasis on East Asian Studies. She looks young to be the head of an international business in the intensely competitive and often cutthroat world of high fashion, but she has a strong personality, iron will, and an ability to roll up her sleeves, learn quickly, and work hard, very hard – all skills needed in abundance to succeed in the industry she has chosen to pursue.
“”I didn’t really think of myself as entrepreneurial. I guess I was kind of forced to be,”” says Fang. Her younger sister, Celina, 24, who studied architecture at Rice University in Houston, also helps out the family business. Her responsibilities include scouting out upscale boutiques to carry the Silk Box line and handling much of the company’s communications and public relations. But Fang credits her mother, Nancy Lee, as the driving force behind Silk Box. “”My mother is the real brains and muscle behind the operations and the company’s most valuable asset,”” says Fang.
You might call Silk Box Nancy Lee’s third child. She started the business out of the basement of her West Windsor home in 1994 when Shirley and Celina were still in high school. Lee had been a molecular scientist for Hoffman-LaRoche while her girls were growing up. But when Lee hit a glass ceiling, she decided a change was in order – that’s when she launched the Silk Box label. Fang’s father is a senior revisor at the United Nations, responsible for making sure the Chinese translation of all resolutions passed by the General Assembly make linguistic, logical, and legal sense.
Fang remembers the company’s beginnings very vividly. All the production was done overseas, she says. Samples came in constantly. And then came the mannequins. “”I was quite frightened by one of the first mannequins. She had hair, make-up, and eyelashes, and she was six feet tall. I was frightened to go down in the basement.””
Fang says her mother has a distinct advantage when it comes to doing business with China. Not only does she speak fluent Mandarin, the official language of mainland China, she also speaks the Shanghai dialect. “”When you are doing business with China, the laws are one thing, but the actual way of doing business is another. It is very much about connections, who you know, and the concept of doing business with friends. When you know people there, even the subtle difference of knowing one dialect over another will give you an advantage and get you a better deal.””
The company’s first customers were merchants in Chinatown who sold traditional Chinese dresses, known as the “”qipao,”” to tourists. The qipao was often used as a wedding dress and set the fashion standard in the Qing Dynasty and the early 1900s when China was opening up to more western influences. In the film “”In the Mood for Love,”” Chinese actress Maggie Cheung wears as many as 30 different qipaos. Silk Box used the basic qipao as the launching point for its line.
While the business was born in 1994, it took three years just to break even. Fang says those years, when she and her mother were handling all of the business, are the most difficult she can remember. The next year they turned a small profit, making steady progress every year. Then 9/11 hit.
As did so many businesses with international ties, Silk Box was hit hard. Then tourism suffered a sharp slump, with resort areas empty. People were not out at parties, wearing Silk Box design and resort wear. Since 9/11 the company has been making its way back steadily. The company hit revenues of one million dollars last year, and Fang is optimistic about the future.
Today, while it’s still very much a family business, Silk Box also employs seven people at its offices at 51 Everett Drive in West Windsor, among them, a data entry officer, a filing clerk, a shipping manager, a bookkeeper, and a customer service manager. The business end of the operation is run out of Shanghai, where Silk Box maintains a small office to handle the details of import-export and finance.
Fang and her mother have their feet firmly planted in both cultures, dividing their time between China and the United States, with trips to China often lasting as long as a month and a half so they can oversee production from concept to showroom floor
Lee designs the fabrics, working with advice from design consultants, including one in New York and one in Taiwan. She also relies heavily on feedback from the label’s customers and sales representatives. The company has its own textile looms in China and owns a majority share in textile looms in Hangzhou, one of the twin cities, which, along with Suzhou, has been renowned for centuries as the silk capitals of China. Lee decided to buy into the looms several years ago, when all the government-owned looms were losing money.
Silk Box works with an embroidery contractor in Suzhou to come up with the intricate and unusual designs. The company contracts with a cut-and-sew factory in Yan Dan mountain and maintains sales offices around the country. It recently started production for Pearl River, the first Chinese department store to open in the United States. Pearl River had its beginnings in New York’s Chinatown and opened another branch in Soho last year.
The clothing has sold best in California and Florida where color is often used as a bold fashion statement. Celebrity fans of Silk Box include Alicia Silverstone, who wore the company’s apparel for fashion shoots in Seventeen Magazine and Glamour. Cyndi Lauper, the singer who built an image out of girls just wanting to have fun, has also been photographed wearing Silk Box.
Silk Box is also carried by Nordstom department stores and the Mark Shale catalogue. While it is working on expanding catalogue sales and establishing a website, currently approximately 80 percent of sales come from small upscale boutique stores. Locally, the designer wear can be found at Be In Style, 2 Chambers Street in Princeton and at A La Mode in West Trenton (see directions below).
Cheryl Cvetan, owner of A La Mode, says the June 19 trunk show will offer customers a chance to order exactly what they want – in their size, in their style, in their color choice. “”A trunk show is a good way for me and designers to see what people want, almost like a focus group right on the spot. Our clients can actually help influence the fall line. If there’s a print nobody picks, Silk Box might drop it. But if everybody picks it, and it’s in high demand, they know they might have to get more material.””
Cvetan has been carrying the Silk Box line ever since she took over the store two and a half years ago. She became familiar with Silk Box in a former position as buyer and manager for Louie and Lenny, a clothing store in Flemington. When she opened her own store, she decided to offer it to her own customers. “”They’re very good at taking beautiful silk and cutting it into an unconventional style. Also, when you wear it, it feels good. It’s funky. It’s all about making a statement, expressing yourself through your clothes. It’s distinctive.””
Diana Fortier, who owns Be In Style, is also happy to carry the Silk Box label. The store, with an entrance adorned with hand-painted bumble bees, has that cheerful intimacy you’d find hanging out in your best friend’s favorite room, only it’s aimed at the client 40 years old and up, someone who’s got a distinctive style of her own. “”You want your friends to say, where did you get that, not I know where you got that,”” says Fortier, who started carrying Silk Box with this year’s spring line after she was approached by Celina Fang.
Fang says it’s the appreciation of customers that give her the motivation to push forward with what her mother started. She emphasizes that while she loves what she does, and while the world of fashion may seem very fast-paced and glamorous, there’s a lot of grit beneath the glitter. “”It can be very tedious. I have spent an entire day trying to figure out how to change a button. It’s like Hollywood. You don’t see the sweat that’s underneath.””
Silk Box trunk show, A La Mode, 600 1/2 Bear Tavern Road, Trenton, Saturday, June 19, 609-883-5299. Directions: Take Route 1 South to 95 south to exit 2. Turn right toward Trenton-Mercer Airport. A La Mode is 1/2 mile down on the left, across from the 7-11 convenience store. Lotusa, Inc., 51 Everett Drive, Suite A90, 609-275-4403, www.Lotusa.com (for fabrics only; apparel coming soon).
