Hyper Hyper Wong hits it big

SHIRLEY Wong looked just a little out of place, surrounded by leather-clad lanky women with flaming red hair and pierced eyebrows. Here she was, a petite Chinese woman from Hong Kong, married and a mother of two, wearing a simple black dress and standing in the middle of one of the most avant-garde fashion shopping centres in London.

But take Shirley Wong out of her outlet at the trendy Hyper Hyper in Kensington High Street and there is still no reason why her clothes shouldn't belong here: those skinny, slithery dresses that the lanky red-haired women might buy hang neatly on racks, all shiny satin and lycra. Because even if Shirley Wong doesn't look as if she's about to go to an acid rave party tonight, her clothes certainly do.

These are kitschy, sexy, young clothes for just that sort of women: purple spandex is wrapped, mummy-style, around a curvaceous body with slashes at the navel and under the breasts; diaphanous blouses reveal everything and hide nothing, skirts are ultra-short and super-tight. This is Hyper Hyper after all, and this is the sort of thing people want to buy.

But when Wong sits down to design collections for her overseas buyers - Lane Crawford in Hong Kong, C.K. Tang in Singapore - she immediately reverts to good old-fashioned Asian common sense, but without losing her sense of adventure.

The Hong Kong-born designer arrived in the UK in 1975 for her education, eventually graduating from the highly-respected St Martin's School of Art. During that time, Wong's entire family had emigrated to Britain - her brothers were in boarding school and her father went on to open a Chinese restaurant in Germany.

Fashion and art were subjects that had always appealed to Wong, and once she finished her degree in 1986 she immediately set up a company manufacturing her own labels - 'Shirley Wong London' and 'Aqua by Shirley Wong'. It was the more challenging of two opportunities she had at the time: top Italian fashion house Erreuno offered Wong a job in their studio, and although she took it on for three months, she knew it was her calling to do her own thing.

'I knew I could have my own business, and I was anxious to set up my own label,' she said.

Before long, Wong was selling to retailers like Jones on the fashionable King's Road - her clothes were displayed right next to those by Jean-Paul Gaultier - Midas in Sloane Street and major department stores like Liberty and Fenwick's. Over the next few years, she began selling to 100 outlets all around the country.

'What I do is different from what you can buy in the High Street,' she said.

Retailers in Italy and Japan also stock Wong's two lines: her first is made of classic separates, while 'Aqua by Shirley Wong' is her diffusion range - younger, trendier, sexier.

But with thousands of designers struggling to make it in London as well as internationally, Wong said she had had her fair share of obstacles.

'It has been difficult. The business is so competitive anyway, and while Europeans are accepting of Asians on most levels, it is clear that regardless of how many years you are in a particular country you will never really be an insider.' Although Wong has lived in England for 18 years, is a full British citizen and 'can't imagine living in any other place', she said it 'sometimes occurs to me that having a Chinese name is less attractive'. Not to the Europeans, she hastens to point out, but to the Asians.

'In this country and in this business, they don't mind so much if you have a 'Wong' on your label. But in Asia, they do mind. Their thinking is why should they buy something for the same price if it has an Asian name, if they can get something European.' Whether this is an accurate reflection of attitudes to Asian high-flyers in fashion or not, Wong is determined to persevere add creativity to her seasonal collections to appeal to a worldwide clientele. In some ways, she said, having a Chinese name works in her favour as her customers interpret some of the details in her clothes to be a by-product of her culture.

'People think the clothes I design have a Chinese influence. I don't know if I consciously set out to achieve that, but I think it is just the way I feel about things and put them together. I found oblong buttons and put them on a padded jacket, and suddenly I have something that looks Chinese. I guess it must have something to do with my culture.' Alongside the short and slinky dresses at her Hyper Hyper outlet were some stunning padded silk jackets that even the most conservative Chinese grandmother would approve of. Wong uses a lot of matte lycra fabrics which can be flung into the washing machine and something she calls 'bubbly' cloth - which feels the way it sounds - for some very tactile dresses.

'I suppose these are sexy, clubby clothes,' she said.

'I don't know if I would have been able to design clothes like these some years ago, but over time I have become more confident. Like many designers, I went through a bad patch a few years ago, but touch wood, everything is fine now. Today, it's not a question of customers not having money, it's just a question of them being a bit more careful about what they buy.' London retail prices for Wong's sassy clothes are reasonable: dresses are around the GBP90 (HK$1,080) mark, blouses up to GBP60 and skirts between GBP50 and GBP80. The main 'Shirley Wong London' label is slated to do well overseas, particularly in Hong Kong, but she has yet to see how 'Aqua by Shirley Wong' will fare. If people really want to buy it, she said, they could always visit London.

'People don't come to London to buy classic or sophisticated clothes. They are here for the younger, trendier lines,' she said.

People think the clothes I design have a Chinese influence. I don't know if I consciously set out to achieve that, but I think it is just the way I feel about things and put them together

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tK%2FMqWWcp51krrPAyJyjnmdhZX55f49on7Kolad6qcXPnqlmr5%2BjtG60yK2qZqGkYq%2Bqsw%3D%3D