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Culture on Demand: Post-party Hong Kong
The event after the event
By STAN STALNAKER
December 4, 1999
Web posted at 7 a.m. Hong Kong time, 6 p.m. EDT
Hong Kong loves an excuse to party, even on a school night.
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This week was no exception as Hong Kong's glitterati turned up en masse for the Smirnoff International Fashion Awards, a mildly amusing fashion event that rolled through Hong Kong Tuesday, leaving a path of human debris in its high-heeled wake. Wednesday was all about sick days and late office arrivals across the worlds of Asian fashion, media and entertainment as guests struggled to emerge from a Smirnoffian haze.
Now in its 15th incarnation and rotating through major cities for the finals each year, the competition brings together young designers from all over the world to compete for Smirnoff's coveted Best Designer Award. Entrants from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas entered designs using a variety of materials, concepts and funky cuts that often reflected a local approach to the international fashion scene.
The favorites? Everything from vests that looked like giant hairy coconuts to Israeli designs resembling body casts. There were mummy wraps, cone heads, fiber-optic hats and, you know, the usual stuff you see on runways but would never wear. One model glided down the runway with a dozen spindly spines swinging along her back, flipping to and fro like a giant dorsal fin. So organic. And it wouldn't be an international fashion event without the occasional G-string or see-through number, presumably to shock and titillate the assembled multitudes. Note for next year: that doesn't really work anymore.
The winner? From the Philippines, the aforementioned walking coconut. With huge bottles of Smirnoff at every table and only a little sushi, the peanut gallery was suitably entertained but inclined to disagree, and even in the cold light of day the jury is still out on the credibility of the win given so many fantastic submissions.
But this we do know: with judges like John Rocha, David Tang and Michiko Koshino (among others) casting their votes (presumably along a secret list of fashion criteria), it seems the Philippines is the new epicenter of come-hither international fashion. Bet you didn't expect that--so much for Paris, baby.
The evening also featured Chaka Khan, the R&B songstress with a bad haircut, taking the 1,000-plus crowd on a seasick voyage through the 1980s with a series of soft hits that somehow got a few people out of their seats. Chaka even pulled a few away from the table-to-table air-kiss circuit for a few hippy hippy shakes near the stage, which in Hong Kong is nothing short of amazing.
But the most interesting part of this little marketing coup for Smirnoff was the next-day buzz. Never, and I mean never, have so many mobile-phone minutes been used for a postmortem. It went something like this:
(Ring. Click.) TV exec: "Hi--it's noon. I'm still in bed. But no one's in the office yet, so I'll go in after lunch."
(Click. Call waiting.) Model: "Hi--guess what, I missed my shoot because of that party last night. I got home at 5 a.m. because there was actually good music and I danced too late. There's never good music here in Hong Kong, so I can't be blamed."
(Click. Call waiting.) Advertising exec: "Did you know the juice was premixed? I didn't know that, so we mixed the Smirnoff with the already-mixed juice. I'm working from home today."
(Ring. Click.) Music promoter: "My stomach is doing flip-flops. I thought the invitation said dinner, and we just had that one little piece of satay. I'm not going out again for a week."
(Click. Voicemail.) Graphic designer: "Where is everyone? Everyone's on voicemail today. Why did they do it on a TUESDAY?"
And on it goes. Critics say Hong Kong can be shallow, self-obsessed and highly unproductive. Um, well, er, at least now we know why--and we blame it all on weeknights.
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