"One thing" director Fantai exclusive interview: Do the website and do fashion, to enter the society is interesting

Last January, a young Hong Kong writer, "The Floating World", was quietly appearing in the Taiwan publishing market, the Hong Kong writer first published in Taiwan and shortlisted for the top ten Non-fiction awards at the 2017 Taipei International Book Fair.

The title of "The Floating World" is rich in literature, and the "fashion and multi-directional body" is the academic language of cultural studies. Book cover, the author of cultural research from the perspective of fashion, literary techniques loaded plate, a name for the era of the magnificent feast.

The author's pen name is too early to sound mysterious, but when she is young, she is the old face of the Hong Kong cultural sector.

This day, I meet with Fantai in the café, almost to be late, see she is about to step into the café, I dashed to help her open the door.

Into the café, we greet each other like a maiden meet, too early no shelves, sit down, arms fell on the wooden table white very, I do not consciously stare, she a little shy smile said "arm is very thick!" Oh, no! "Haha smile two, the fact is that we do not care about arm weight, this is only two girls between the greeting code."

Different from the imagination, the original to write fashion review of the appearance of a lot of clothing, Fantai but can make people relaxed, she was wearing a large pink color of sleeveless blouse, with light green and knee long skirts, color gently reflect the spring sun, so that she appears light and soft. No openings, clothes have been said a lot.

Later, Tai told me that on the plane to Taiwan she saw the film "Confederate 鹣 Flounder" the heroine's wartime wear feel beautiful, it is in Christian Dior new style before 1947. Dress design was affected by military uniforms, natural waist, skirts are received in the calf, self-control fortitude, charming also strong. Later in Taipei to see a similar length of skirts, she was happy to buy one, to work hard, also do not give up between work to find playfulness. (Recommended reading: Why do you work?) Give the work meaning back to yourself )

People had mistakenly thought she was an old man

Fantai is a total, just too precocious, she had low eyebrow poetry, write novels, write comments, have won many literary prizes, but also the heart into the flashy world, in the newspaper as a journalist, editor-in-chief of the city topology, in the "Extra" magazine when editing, deep description of the city and Desire hundred states.

She is now the director of the "One Thing" (object a) of the Hong Kong fashion website.

What do you mean "too early"? These two words are also loved by Taiwanese writers: poet Xiayu has a poem, Tang Shuwen The earliest news blog is called "too early there is a word." There is a saying, too early there is a word, so civilized, and Fantai write clothes, writing is also a civilization. Human civilization, is from Adam and Eve bites the fruit of knowledge, with the eyes of the secular world, so find clothing cover body, so speech.

From her jewel-box, Cheongsam, Haute couture, to T-shirt, as Tai in the book, "a shirt is never just a shirt." "Through the pen-name fashion, fashion commentary in The great times, she was in the folds of the layers of overlap to play." (Extended reading:"Fang Tai Chu-wen" Cheung's body that cheongsam, two generations of Hong Kong woman's Code )

Take the pen name, originally is because the reporter work outside the contribution, is not too high profile by the colleague recognition, continues to now her "one thing" business card is also called Tai.

Tai said if you do not know who you are, "you can open up to write, there will be some chemical action." 」

"Because of the name of the relationship, then many people will think I am a boy, an old man, manuscripts will also be more respect!" 」

After she had said her playful wink, a woman's signal. Then know not to cross-examine Woolf pen Orlando: "Wear male identity, feeling or treatment is different?" "The early experience is quite clear, this is not a female conjecture."

She speaks Beijing quickly and well, "No matter how the world changes now, men and women again how" equal ", I think is, fart words, really! She said, with her fingers in equal double quotes, a hearty laugh, with a little Hong Kong-style nasal and outspoken, the two tones of equality in reality.

"Too early," the word accidentally took her a trip through the gender identity, back to the woman's identity is very good, but the control also has disconsolate.

"When you were mistaken for Mr. Fang, people would say," You have a history of writing things, "or" you see things very thoroughly. " Later, when the female status appeared, I heard less people say so. I think it might be a little hard to say these words to a woman. Like now I look very focused on the writing of fashion, but in fact the content is still those things. 」

Writing fashion, but also writing politics, writing the city, writing the spirit of the Times

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of male thinkers who were fascinated by the study of fashion now speak of eminent masters, such as Simmel, Roland Batt, Banjamin, Deleuze, and poets Baudelaire.

"Then why is this bunch of men obsessed with Fashion?" "Too early to ask themselves quickly, and quickly, the thinkers at that time to" fashion "as an important topic of research, in fact, in order to answer their industrialization, modernization, urbanization issued an outlaw.

"The Philosophy of fashion (philosophy of Fashion), as sociologist Simmel, is an attempt to explain modernity and human psychology from fashion." "When the population gathers from the vast countryside to the dense city, space compression, class ambiguity, the emergence of contradictory texture: not only want to be with people, and the group of others to obtain a sense of security, but also want to seek different, show the ego, unique personality, so that they do not feel to be engulfed by the city of the sea.

Reading the duality of Man from fashion, Tai said that such contradictory tensions, mutual confrontation and compromise, are the driving force of "everything in the world to run".

Predecessors have completed the grand narrative of fashion, now the fashion research back to the landscape, Tai example "If I do not understand the wrong words, simply wish the theory of wrinkles on the Chinese history to say." Taiwan also has Paris (Shishun) Ah, to fashion to write about the history of girls! There are more people in Taiwan who write about fashion in the perspective of cultural studies, but less in Hong Kong. "Tone sounds lonely?" Tai said, "I also want to live in Taiwan, ah, there is no one to hire me?" "(Recommended reading: Chen Jin x Shishun of the young girl to talk: Confidently walk a Crooked fork in the road )

I asked Tai when to start writing Fashion, and why do you want to write Fashion?

"At first I went to a very old very small newspaper, they supplement no people, the vacancy to write fashion, I wrote it!" At that time, not too many people understand this category, there is no one to control. I am not a fashion-born, do not receive any PR information, they have to use their own way to write their own ways. "she wrote fashion by self-study, learn from the film, fashion history, do their own mentors also do students, see results, she must be very demanding of their own people."

High-end fashion in fact, like Art published, she is also good at writing art commentary, about high-end fashion how to see how to write, she said Han: "Each design is in response and intervention era, and designers also through fashion into history." "Think of the beginning is the Hong Kong University Comparative Literature background, we are more convinced, no wonder her cultural research and theoretical perspective of a deep grasp." (Recommended reading: use design to remember an age!) Taiwan's first commercial designer: Gingshuirong )

"And actually I want to write about politics, but then the newspaper's orientation is not very able to write this kind of thing, when I secretly put it into fashion writing inside, and then pass!" Just think it's fun, start writing all the time. "It's like discovering a secret tunnel, creating a secret base in the adult world, playing with the freedom, the good times, and remembering that she smiled happily."

Because fashion is easily regarded as "a woman's thing", instead, under state supervision, in the "supplement" that men think is not hard to send, have space.

She embarks from the fashion and the body, cuts writes has always been considered "the hard core content" the politics, the National clan, the Society, the philosophy and the history, when the market's writing territory is masculine, she has developed an elegant challenge path for herself, has the interest, has the playful.

Think about it, the original does not divide the RTHK, the fashion is just for women's writing to the world to open up a clear heaven and earth. Perhaps this is one of the most elegant feminine writings in the Chinese world still dominated by patriarchy. (Extended reading:"Fang Tai Chu Wen" Xiao Hong: In the troubled times, women both write and wear )

The Housewives of Hong Kong and Taiwan have jointly supported the world's fashion production in the living room

People who write fashion must be curious about the world and have a desire to see and understand.

Where does this desire come from? She said she might have had something to do with her grandmother when she came back.

Too early grandma has a suit shop, she was a child like to listen to clothes car to do the voice of clothing, the clatter, sewing through the cloth, cloth into the clothes before the car is a plane, after the three-dimensional, more like magic, reassuring.

My second aunt is a tailor, she married to a suit shop in my family and asked five or six young sisters to go with her to make a custom-made dress. I later discovered that it was a story of how a woman could have her own life and even feed five or six girls through her clothes. "Too early in the heat of the tone, there is admiration in the eyes." I thought of her again and said, "a shirt is never just a shirt." 」

In fact, I would like to go back to visit her, and then only to make clothes for relatives, have you ever regretted, Miss? But the more intimate the family, the more difficult it is to ask.

Changed a turn, she from the personal life history of the story, launched the Hong Kong 70 or 80 years of export economic and trade picture, "Hong Kong at that time there are many" cottage factories, clothing, exports and export. Some clothing details can not be done with clothes, it will go to the home factory to process, one by one, my mother also brought a few batches of clothes back to processing, I remember sitting on the door of the small bench, watching my mother is processing that picture. 」

Smiling, Taiwan, also experienced a nationwide mobilization of domestic workers during the same period.

1972, the provincial President Xia Dongmin advocated "living room is the factory" campaign to encourage the family foundry, expand Export, when Taiwan housewives in their living room to organize a small production line, while sewing socks, clothes, Christmas lights, sewing up the family, can also cook on time, care for children. From the ordinary living room in Taiwan, the journey traverses the Pacific Ocean and eventually arrives at the American Mall. The journey of the object, woven into the life history of women in Taiwan.

In the global production of fashion, Hong Kong and Taiwan housewife figure overlap.

Times of reflection, and the age of tender

Tai says he's not following the fashion type, "just watching the world through fashion or stories and desires related to fashion."

Her Hong Kong new book, "Dress Worry-free" Preface the first paragraph wrote: "The speed of fashion, related to the rhythm of the Times." 」

Deep description of fashion, nothing more than to understand the world, to understand their own times: such an era, in the history of which coordinates will fall in the position? What kind of age are we in?

Tai often wrote in the book 20 years, people said that the 20 's is roaring, modern, jazz and chasing dreams of the era, she said, the 20 is "lost generation."

At that time, women and girls in the role of the great reform, all the rapid development: Women into the workplace, unbridled dancing, free, freedom, the liberation, has not seen before. But Tai said, "The power of liberating women is combined with consumer culture, pointing to drowning and pleasure, more than political and social welfare." 」

She cited an example in the book, "1929 Easter, women armed with cigarettes to participate in the parade in New York Avenue, for Women's autonomy and public participation, and later the world knew it was a promotional campaign to promote cigarettes. The same year in October, Wall Street stock market crash, the Great Depression swept the country, "there is such a glamorous woman to liberate the image, has to wait until the same lost 60 years, but that is a more reflective era." 」

What do you think is the style of our time, when I ask too early? She smiled and asked, "What do you think?" 」

Our times style is too much, whether it is the 20 's low waist body skirt, or the 60 's hippies, the 70-year punk, 80 's exaggerated shoulder pads, and so on, at this time to wear more independent identity, but a stylized symbol, personalized medals.

I do not have the answer to this question, but I look back to the Hong Kong and Taiwan These years surging student movement, I think we are a reflection of the times, then according to the beginning of the argument, may also because we are lost generation. (Recommended reading: written after the Sun-Flower movement: The next step for the younger generation, the end is the beginning )

"The style of the Times Ah ⋯⋯" she thought about the question again, pull the corner of the problem, and then think of the personal life history of the memory to find a common, "do not know whether this answer to your question, I was a child to see those adults, very envious of their clothes, think because they are big talent can wear." But now in retrospect, they were only 20 years old, and now I have grown older than many of them, but still feel that I did not grow up as a child imagined adults. 」

I think this era, is not a tender era? Is it possible that the "mature act" of the previous generation is also faking it?

For too early to describe the tender, I repeatedly think, the opposite of tender is "mature", in "quick, to change" the acceleration of the era, the whole world advocating "young" value, people do not have time to lake, we are too afraid of the old, too afraid of slow, afraid of being said to keep up with the times and by the social elimination, is also a fear of exclusion of fear. If "pretending to be mature" is a source of security for the last generation, is it possible to come from our generation's desire for security?

This is an era of fear of "stability," but Fantai also wants to ask, when this generation emphasizes freedom and individuality, are we also a little afraid of the word "commitment"? Personalized allows you to be free, but will not in turn make your life can not go down a course?

This problem, we have to go all the way to the end of life, we may have the answer.

One thing, the desire to explore by fashion

Tai a lot of contradictions, but also because of contradictions, the perspective of care is broad enough, the inner can also woven the vast universe.

For example, she speaks fast, but the text offers a slow rhythm and a sense of time, and it seems gentle and supple, actually very outspoken, and extremely rigorous in her training. Her handwriting can be literature, but thinking about the operation of the website must be pragmatic landing, after all, to be a journalist and magazine editor born.

Tai said, now do "one thing" (object a) website director, the most afraid of others mentioned her before writing literature, after all, in the context of RTHK, "Wenqing" is tantamount to willful, lack of earthly desires, Bustian. But fashion is always about desire, so name "object a", from Lacanian Psychoanalysis's philosophical term "small object" (object petit a), later turned into Chinese "one thing".

"Just Chinese inside also said, there is no thing, where to cause dust." "Too early to explain, a thing in Chinese, also speak desire."

This is a desire of the Times, Hong Kong is a city of desire, the desire of the birth and death, hot money flow, when the end of the media fell, the RTHK shook. In the core of desire to do the network media, want to borrow by fashion to open our body situation and survival topic, not easy.

As a form of content, Tai says they are still experimenting with the possibility that content will be priced.

Too early to joke, "really every day in a small crash!" In this era, content and advertising, business model can not think separately, so do the site is very challenging. "The same as online media, women fans are also so, the network era, such as the treacherous sea, we are a boat, looking forward to produce the most quality content, but not by the waves overturned."

But too early to try, "do the website, do fashion, it is necessary to enter the community is interesting!" "For example, they expand the" BigProject"L size large code, talk about the desire of city life; For example, she also wants to do one months undercover project in the fashion industry,"undercover", two people are excited to look forward to!

One side secretly in the inner small collapse, but also can take a big stride, remember too early like to Simmel talk about fashion drive, from the double-sided nature, wrote here to find that her internal drive also from her internal conflict, she wrote fashion, in fact, also in writing themselves.