Life and Leisure
The discovery of an angel in China
By Zhang Yuwei (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-26 10:59
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NEW YORK - Four years ago, Joseph Carle, a creative director for Marie Claire at the time, found what he had been clamoring for at a small Beijing fashion show.
As he sat watching the show, a long-legged 18-year-old stunned Carle. He immediately asked the show's stylist for the model's name.
"Liu Wen, a beginner," the stylist answered.
"No, no. She is no beginner, she is a star," Carle remembered replying.
His discovery came at a time when Carle was in desperate need of a new face to inspire his methods of expressing beauty, fashion and style in China. He said that he found everything in Liu.
It also came at the most unexpected of times for Liu Wen, now 22 and one of the most booked models in Paris and New York. She recently became the first and only Chinese model to walk the Victoria's Secret lingerie fashion show for two years straight.
After a photoshoot for Marie Claire in London, Liu made her professional debut in Milan in 2008. She has since walked for the fashion world's who's who: Anna Sui, Dolce & Gabbana, Alexander McQueen, Chloe and Lanvin. In April, Liu signed with Estee Lauder to become one of the first Asian models to represent a global cosmetic company.
She is also the leading face for a growing roster of Chinese women models who are crowding international runways, a phenomenon that many fashion experts say goes hand in hand with the growing number of Chinese fashion consumers as the nation's government pushes for more domestic spending.
"Over the last few years, China has become not just an emerging market, but a viable market with millions of consumers. So it makes sense that you want to include more Chinese models whom the consumers can identify with," said Carle, now the creative director for NUMERO China.
Low expectations
Growing up in Yongzhou, a city in Hunan province in Central China, where most have a meager grasp of fashion, Liu said she never dreamed of walking on an international runway. In her teens, Liu thought about becoming a teacher. She entered a local tourism college where she trained to be a tour guide.
Liu, now at 5 feet, 11 inches, was 5 feet, 6 inches in middle school. She said that her parents, both of whom are not tall, never thought that she would become a professional model.
"They never expected me to be this tall, and I always thought that being a model, you have to be pretty. I am not that pretty," she said humbly.
In 2005, she entered a modeling contest in her hometown just hoping to win a laptop computer. She won.
"Having a laptop was the first step to get me connected to the world and I was so happy I won it," she said.
But in late 2006, Liu was unemployed. She said she often sat in her Beijing apartment that she shared with some other Chinese models, waiting to be called.
"I was very stressed out. I even thought maybe I should just give up," she recalled. "But I believe in hard work and I wanted to keep trying."
Then came her discovery by Carle.
"I never expected (meeting Carle) would happen," said Liu at her New York agency in Lower Manhattan.
"Liu is an exceptional model. For the Victoria's Secret show, it is not enough to be just beautiful, and to have a great body, you have to have incredible presence, you have to have the ability to project yourself from the runway," said John Pfeiffer, the head casting director for Victoria's Secret lingerie show.