Elle looks to the east; move over Mao suits: Patricia Wang is introducing high style

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, August, 1988 by Cynthia Baughman

Elle looks to the East

New York City--Patricia Wang, Elle/World Fashion's new editor in Shanghai, has a mission: to teach Chinese women what to wear, when and with what. The typical young woman wears all her jewelry, cosmetics and best clothes at once, looking like "a big butterfly in the street," says Wang. A bride wears her wedding dress to the movies because it is wasteful to wear a dress only once, and there are "not so many divorces in China," Wang smiles.

There's another important audience for the fashion book: Chinese tailors. Noted for their excellent ability to copy patterns--"We just see the design, see the picture, go home and make the clothes," says Elle/World Fashion publisher Lo Chaotien--the tailors are currently known for their copies of bad-imitation 1950s designs. Exposure to Elle, it's hoped, will give them new inspiration.

Wang, for her part, seems a perfect fit for the joint venture of France's Hachette Publications, Inc., and Shanghai Translation Publishing House, the government agency that works with foreign publishers. Two trips to the West earlier in the 1980s exposed the new editor to international style, and her blunt haircut, understated cosmetics and well-tailored clothes demonstrate the appropriateness of Elle's choice. Having spent the last decade at Shanghai Translation working on dictionaries and newspapers, Wang jumped at the chance to become Elle/World Fashion's editor.

From one perspective, the obstacles facing Wang appear enormous. The government, for example, requires printing on the mainland, where, according to Robert Gutwillig, Hachette International publisher, "There's no paper." All local magazines are printed on newsprint. For the foreseeable future Elle/World Fashion will import its paper.

Staffing is another concern. Whereas two fashion institutes in the People's Republic educate designers, and professional models are plentiful, the country has few trained journalists.

Advertising presents problems, too. In a country accustomed to various prices for the same commodity, depending on who is buying--especially Chinese versus foreign purchasers--Hachette's decision to hold a single ad rate ($7,000 for a black-and-white page) probably means little local advertising in the short term. International advertisers, however, plan to capitalize on the current Chinese craving for Western goods. Estee Lauder, Christian Dior and L'Oreal, among others, will advertise in the new magazine from the beginning.

The potential market--World Almanac estimates China's 1986 population at well over a billion--of course, explains Hachette's eagerness to move into the People's Republic. Says Gutwillig, "China is the most exciting market in the world in the next century." And, the Chinese hunger for Western things apparently is already voracious. Status, for example, comes from flaunting a Marlboro box, with or without cigarettes. Chinese newlyweds try to "decorate their apartments" with something Western, Wang says, such as a Western-style magazine. In fact, Wang still displays the 1983 Vogue she received on her first trip to Europe.

For that reason, not even the expensive five-yuan ($1.50) cover price of the magazine--twice the price of a best-quality book--should deter readers. Whether as a wedding gift, part of a dowry or an instruction book for tailors, Hachette expects the magazine to sell.

Hachette, however, will hedge its bet as a publisher in the People's Republic by also entering the fashion manufacturing business there. The French company will produce an Elle brand of apparel and accessories in a new Hachette facility in Beijing.

Meanwhile, Patricia Wang is off and running with the July debut of Elle/World Fashion. With her country, she has made the transition from the cultural revolution (1966 to 1976), when the West, colorful clothes and cosmetics were considered "decadent and bourgeois," to 1988, when the Chinese government supports, even encourages, the high style of Elle.