Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Where art meets fashion

In the period around the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, from early 2010 to mid 2011, Lu Schaper (top left in the picture) worked as a freelance artist with the famous high-end fashion chain Shanghai Story. She was invited to bring in her artist's point of view and local Shanghai experience, which resulted in about a dozen of scarf designs, based on paintings she created for this purpose. The themes for the scarves were varied, and included for instance a Puxi/Pudong (Old and New Shanghai) comparison, a motive inspired by the expo buildings from twenty different countries, and a classical Chinese Buddhist theme with seven lotus flowers. These silk and pashmina scarves have been selling very well in the various stores of this chain, including their shops at the Huahei Road (former Avenue Joffre), the main fashion shopping street of Shanghai. They have contributed considerably to the continued rise of this brand's reputation and success. Her work has also been used for interior and exterior decoration of shops and offices of Shanghai Story. She was interviewed in the popular blog Shanghaiist based on this work (link). It was an intensive and challenging, but satisfactory period for her as an artist, having to deal with market requirements and deadlines. She has said about it: "Painting is like playing a solo instrument, designing scarves is more like playing in an orchestra.".

Lu Schaper is no longer working with Shanghai Story, but she still has plenty of ideas to use her unique art, with both Oriental and Western influences and experience,  for high quality fashion and interior decoration purposes. Examples could be scarves, dresses, umbrellas, handbags, jewelry, pillows, sheets, curtains, china-ware, book covers, CD covers, and so on, either for the public or as representation gifts. If a company is interested to pursue these ideas together with her, you are welcome to contact her by email (Chinese or English).