Was It Her Campaigns That Made You Notice the Boutique Called Dong Liang? | 100 People With Ideas

People who shop at Dong Liang aren't buying Uma Wang or Zhang Da. They're buying the experience Dong Liang itself offers.

Tasha first heard about China's independent fashion designers around 2008, when she was still writing consumer-trend reports for a department called Discovery inside Ogilvy. Shangguan Zhe had just started his own brand in Xiamen, and shopping on Taobao was nowhere near as common as it is now. When she saw these designs, they struck her as nothing like what the big department stores sold — "there was no sense of distance, and they could move you."

In 2010, wanting to see those designers' work for herself, she went to Dong Liang's first store, tucked into a Beijing hutong. It had already closed for the day, so Tasha looked through the glass at the tiny room and felt that every detail had been thought through. She wanted to understand this group of people better, so she went back a second time, and this time Nan Lang, one of Dong Liang's founders, greeted her.

That wish to understand may well have been the deepest reason she later left a big company for Dong Liang. To become one of its partners, of course, she also had to share the thinking of the other two, Nan Lang and Charles. Today the work is divided this way: Nan Lang sets the brand's visual tone, Charles handles the designer relationships, and Tasha packages and promotes Dong Liang itself.

Ask what has made Dong Liang succeed as a boutique and, beyond what may be the most mature fashion-buying system in China, the answer is that Dong Liang's presence as a brand has never been overshadowed by any designer in its stores. People who shop at Dong Liang aren't buying Uma Wang or Zhang Da. They're buying the experience Dong Liang itself offers.

That experience comes, of course, from Nan Lang's approach to the displays. Against the fresh, fashionable, playful, even rebellious clothes on sale, the stores themselves are quiet and restrained, dark wood filling most of the visual field. The interiors of the two Shanghai stores also often work in local architectural elements. At the recently closed "Dong Liang × Airbnb" exhibition, you felt like a guest in homes of many different styles rather than a visitor at a show.

"Designers' Homes," Dong Liang's collaboration with Airbnb:

Marketing like "Dong Liang × Airbnb" is mostly Tasha's idea. People who come for Airbnb probably know nothing about Dong Liang, and that is exactly her point: to get more people with no feel for fashion at all to learn about it.

Run quickly through the marketing Dong Liang has done and much of it breaks the rules. Zhang Da's hair exhibition took up the part of the body people deal with all the time. Seventeen designers were invited to design 17 dresses, and the money from the sales built a village primary-school library named Dong Liang. A Shanghai café opened a pop-up inside the store; a fragrance brand held its launch there.

Zhang Da's hair exhibition:

"You have to be very clear about where the value of what you're doing lies and what your original purpose was. Then, as you seize opportunities one by one, as long as you dare to imagine it, you don't have to worry about lacking resources. Resources are something you cultivate," Tasha said. It took Dong Liang six years to get this far; early on it once went 22 days without a single order, but Nan Lang and Charles held on.

In 2013 the organizers of London Fashion Week came to Dong Liang, hoping it would recommend designers to show in London. Tasha wondered whether Dong Liang could take the designers there itself. "That would be a breakthrough for us too, and one more layer of security for the designers, but the problem was finding sponsors in a very short time. In the end it came together, and five designers made the trip."

Working almost the same way, Dong Liang took over a full day of shows at Shanghai Fashion Week the following year, something with no precedent. In Tasha's words: "Dare to think about anything — it might just work out."

Tasha:

Everyday Style List:

Q: Besides your wallet, keys, and phone, what always goes in your bag?

T: Lipstick in every color.

Q: Which brand takes up the most room in your closet?

T: HE YAN, Sacai, Nike.

Q: Is there a designer whose every design you'd buy if you had the money?

T: Too many, but then I catch myself — people shouldn't be that greedy.

Q: What's the thing you've used the longest? Tell us the story behind it.

T: A small pocket mirror. My husband gave it to me ten years ago, in college, before he was even my boyfriend.

Q: What feels very "you"? Anything works — a smell, a color, a brand, or a few abstract words.

T: Red. Simple and elegant.

Q: What have you bought recently that put you in a really good mood?

T: MUJI marshmallows.

Q: Your favorite skincare or makeup products?

T: Aesop.

Q: Recommend the restaurant you go to most often — the one you trust most.

T: La Strada on Anfu Road. It has a potato pizza.