Word: chan
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...awaits you when you finally get there is a dream of southern France, not a slice of southern China. Complete with manicured lawns, shuttered windows, carriage lamps and oil paintings, the reservation-only Restaurant 131 has become one of Hong Kong's most sought-after dinner venues. Actor Jackie Chan has been known to book the whole restaurant, and the guest book reads like a Hong Kong Who's Who. This is not simply a result of its intimate ambience (with room for no more than a dozen or so, an evening there has the air of a private party...
...Fiona, then a menswear designer, at a Canadian company called Ports International. The company had its heyday in the '70s and early '80s when its clothes were carried by stores like Bergdorf Goodman. But by 1989 the brand had lost some of its stature and was purchased by Alfred Chan, a Canadian entrepreneur who was born near Xiamen and raised in Hong Kong. Chan married Fiona and made the unlikely decision to move the company's operations to Xiamen and relaunch the brand to cater exclusively to the then tiny population of mainland Chinese women with the means to afford...
...visionary but risky move. Fashion was just beginning to re-emerge in China after decades of communist-mandated austerity, but the major luxury brands hadn't made inroads. A market was there for the taking, but Chan couldn't find a design team willing to stick it out in a steamy, crowded Chinese city where the foreign population numbered in the dozens and not many locals spoke English. By 1994 he had worked with a few designers, and he persuaded his wife and her younger sister to give Xiamen a six-month try. "The deal," says Fiona...
...wasn't long before the Cibanis adapted to their trial-by-fire China immersion. Ports International grew into the perfect hybrid of foreign cachet and local sensibility that Chinese woman craved. Many customers believed that the clothes they were buying at Ports' growing chain of stores were imported. Chan's marketers encouraged that perception, using high-profile models like Kate Moss and Claudia Schiffer in their ad campaigns. Ports had obvious advantages over competition from other foreign luxury brands: it was less expensive and had much wider distribution. But its real assets were the intangibles the Cibanis picked...
...Moss showed up at a gala in a classic tux jacket over sleek satin leggings. These days Armani is so closely associated with the tuxedo that he names each iteration of it after the boldface name who wears it: Travolta, Depp, Beckham. He even provided tuxedos for the Jackie Chan movie The Tuxedo, a comedy about a tux containing magic powers...