Mode 01 · Authorized retail
ISSUE 001 — SHANGHAI, BEIJING, CHENGDU · 6 LABELS REPORTED IN FULL · MEI OBJECT 01 — IN DEVELOPMENT · 联袂 ·
Issue 001 · Cover story
How China decides what is worth wearing
A large, fast-moving and argumentative fashion culture with its own institutions of taste — poorly aligned with the ones that make reputations in Europe and the United States.
Read Issue 001 →Cover image · AI-generated
Contents · 001
Three sections, 6 labels named in full, and every open question printed alongside them.
Cities
A look can start in Chengdu and scale through Hangzhou without anyone abroad noticing
Shanghai holds the buyers and the press, Beijing the institutions, Chengdu the youth culture, Hangzhou the live commerce and the supply chain. The division of labour is why a domestic success can be complete before it is visible anywhere else.
Image · AI-generated
Shop the story
Objects from Issue 001
Every object carries its commerce mode.
Nothing is unattributed, and nothing is priced early.
Mode 02 · Curated · MEI photography
Mode 03 · MEI object · Sampling
MEI 袂
Object 01 — the long coat, second sample
Not for sale until the sample is in hand, the mill is specified and the factory is named
Under the commerce model every object must carry a mode — authorized, curated or MEI object — and no price appears before the label relationship and the exact product are confirmed. Editorial coverage is independent of all three.
The brands index6 labels
named in fullWho they are, where they make, what MEI's relationship with them is — and what MEI earns.
named in fullWho they are, where they make, what MEI's relationship with them is — and what MEI earns.
Email — Issue 002
One issue a fortnight. Designers, cities, objects. No abandoned-cart mail, ever.
The list opens with Object 01. Nothing to sign up to yet — we would rather say so than collect an address we have nowhere to keep.