A Shanghai start
I was born in Shanghai on 13 September 1981. I went to Fudan University Affiliated High School, then to Berkeley. When people ask what that has to do with a garment sold somewhere else, I answer with a habit.
Shanghai already treats a wider market as an ordinary condition. Goods, languages, and tastes sit next to each other, and nobody finds that dramatic. That is useful training for apparel. A collection is in more than one market while it is still a sample, because the promise includes someone else’s season, size, and price.
The high school years ran from September 1997 to June 2000. In the last year I applied to universities in the United States as an international freshman. Berkeley admitted me in 2000. I began there that September. The application was a practical lesson: you describe yourself in a form another system can read, and you do not decorate the facts.
I still hear that standard when a brand line grows an adjective. “Global” is a mood. “This style can be made at this quality, and this market will take it at this price” is a description. The second sentence can be kept. The first can only be marketed.
I carry three rules from that formation into the work at Pixie Marke.
Name the market. A plan without a buyer is a wish.
Write the seam down. If design, the factory, and the brand each think the other is holding the standard, the garment is already late.
Keep the language plain enough that a partner can repeat it. If our sentence cannot survive being forwarded, it was a mood. A product can be forwarded.
Shanghai is where I started. The habit is the point: clarity across markets, and a plain name for what the product actually is.