Ritchie Chan: the brain behind Nomad Store and Triple-Major

Londonewcastle Project Space, 28 Redchurch Street

Words by Marissa Cox.

24-year-old China-born Ritchie Chan is flying the flag for emerging Chinese fashion designers, artists and creatives. He heads up Triple-Major, a fashion collective based in Beijing that enables designers to produce their own collections and present them internationally, as well as inviting international artists and designers to exhibit their work in their three story building in Beijing’s old hutong district. Chan is also the brain behind Nomad Store – a pop-up concept shop, featuring some of the China’s most talented that he’s taken to Hong Kong, Shanghai, LA and now London, where it’s currently residing in the Londonewcastle Project space on Redchurch Street in Shoreditch, organised by Isis Gallery.

Exhibiting in London are artist Charwei Tsai, artist and fashion designer Qiu Hao, artist Yida He and independent magazine store Banana Fish books.

AW: Tell us about about Nomad Store.

RC: We are trying to break the fashion industry’s boundaries and limitations and connect it with other creative forms, such as art and music. So we do a lot of travelling with Nomad Store and we bring some interesting designers to China and at the same time we go out and show the rest of the world some interesting emerging Chinese designers. So it’s a two-way thing.

AW: What boundaries are you trying to break?

RC: One thing that we always try to break is the retail method: traditional, conventional retail. With shopping malls and boutique practises, you sit there and wait for the customers to come to you in this permanent location. What we are trying to do is go to the customer. We often carry niche designers and sometimes we know exactly what kind of people might be interested in them. So we go to cities and we find people to collaborate with – people who are connected locally and are connected to these customers locally. So we started our first Nomad Store in Hong Kong, working with a gallery called ‘I Live Tomorrow’ – they are very well connected in the arts scene. That was our first stop and it was really successful, both in terms of showing creativity and financially. So we decided to keep on going and to go to other stops.

AW: How did you become interested in fashion? And what’s your background?

RC: I was born in Xiamen – my family is from there, but I moved to Hong Kong when I was four. Everything before college was in Hong Kong, but then I went to university in LA; USC California. I studied a triple–major degree, in business, international relations and history.

AW: Ah ha – so that’s where the name ‘Triple-Major’ comes from!

RC: Exactly, but my interest in fashion started when I was young – I began writing for the fashion magazine, M-Style (produced in Xiamen) which was one of first magazines in China, when I was about 16, but that was more of a hobby – I didn’t even know what I was doing. I was just a contributor about local news in Hong Kong, and then when I moved to LA they really liked what I was writing, as it was content that they hadn’t seen before – interviews with local LA artists, and labels like Supreme. It was mainly street-wear, as that was my interest when I was a teenager and that got me into fashion. It wasn’t until one particular opportunity that this hobby turned into a career. The turning point was a project that I curated called ‘White T shirt project’. I invited 31 designers from all over the world to reinterpret the white T shirt, and that was really successful – it went viral. I then started to take fashion more seriously as a career.

AW: How do feel the crossover works between fashion, art and other creative forms?

RC: I think that has something to do with my own personal vision about fashion. I never see them as a physical form – I always see them as a creative forum. To me clothes are a blank canvas for art. It wasn’t hard, but intuitive to plant fashion with art or architecture. To me it was never simply fashion. Fashion is never fashion and music isn’t just music, there are areas that crossover.

AW: How did you choose the artists exhibiting at Londonewcastle?

RC: John (from Isis Gallery) wanted me to give a quick flash of upcoming designers – it was a intuitive process, I wanted to broaden people’s perspective. It’s meant to give people here an idea of everything happening in China.

AW: That’s one of the reasons why we wanted to talk to you – there is a focus on China at the moment, does the media and political situation in China make it difficult to be creative? We’re referring to what happened to Ai Weiwei (China’s most famous living artist) last year, when he was detained.

RC: Absolutely not – the social development in China is surprisingly open – Hong Kong is just about the freest city in the world. Of course there are some constraints – you can’t get on Facebook or Twitter, but in terms of business practise or trying to do something and being creative, it’s great.

AW: Creatives rely so heavily on social media today; do you think that by not being on Twitter and Facebook prevents Chinese people from being successful in some way?

RC: For me it does, but I get around it – Twitter is a very important part of my business, so we have to go through LA, or have friends do it for us. There are a lot of Chinese people that have the option to leave China, but some of them – many that have graduated from places like Central Saint Martins and Parsons – come back to China after university, because one of the main reasons they want to remain in China, is production opportunities and market. You don’t get all these in the same place anywhere else in the world. For example in Europe you have the market, but you don’t get access to resources. A lot of fabrics come from China, so if they stay in London, the production prices are really high. It makes sense that if you come from China, you go back there as you have everything on your doorstep. That’s one of the conveniences and at the same time, in terms of restrictions –there are none – as long as it’s nothing politically sensitive. Also at the moment there are so many more opportunities for Chinese people – there is so much media attention on China; ID magazine, Dazed, you name it – they are interviewing emerging Chinese talent – the hype is definitely going. And it’s such a mysterious place – people always wonder what’s going on there.

AW: Who are you most excited about at the moment?

RC: The Digest Design Workshop who make the paper crane bags – they have a lot of potential. They are rather underexposed at the moment, but I think their designs are on an international level. They’ve been approached by lots of stores – in places like Antwerp. In terms of quality and uniqueness – they are very high level.

AW: Oh yes, we love those crane bags and would love to get our hands on one. So, what does the future hold for you?

RC: Nomad Store is an ongoing project. We have something in Milan in September, in a store called ‘Wok’, but in between we may do another one. At the same time we are doing the opposite; we are taking international boutiques and designers to Beijing.

Triple-Major is showing at Londonewcastle Project Space until tomorrow, 12pm – 6pm. For more information about Triple-Major [click here]

For more about Isis Gallery [click here]