双语新闻：中国热切网罗时尚人才
China Heads To Europe To Recruit Fashion TalentLast summer, Peter Ng traveled to Nottingham Trent University in England, home to one of Europe's top design schools, to recruit a team of young fashion designers.
The candidates he met dreamed of designing for the fashion houses in Milan and Paris. Mr. Ng, director of yarn manufacturer Colour Couture, made a different pitch: a job in Shanghai designing collections using the company's yarns, for marketing to trendy U.S. brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch.
A few weeks later, Mr. Ng was back in Shanghai rolling out the welcome mat for three Nottingham Trent recruits, including 24-year-old Laura Hintz and 22-year-old Eleanor Gould, both graduates.
Mr. Ng's talent search is part of a push by Chinese apparel makers -- from yarn and textile manufacturers to those that stitch the garments -- to break into new territory: offering the world's biggest brands design expertise rather than simply following their instructions. By hiring in-house designers, the Chinese companies' thinking goes, they can turn around clothing collections faster, gain an edge in the fierce domestic competition and charge more for their services. At the same time, these companies are discovering the difficulties of nurturing creative talent. 'It's not easy to work with designers,' Mr. Ng said.
No longer content with simply manufacturing low-cost goods for other companies, Chinese companies in a range of industries are trying to move up the value chain -- with varying degrees of success. Fashion brands have been making their goods in China for years, yet homegrown designers are in short supply. Design is still a new field for young Chinese, and local designers often struggle to grasp Western tastes.
Now China's growing appetite for creative talent is making Western universities into feeder schools for textile manufacturers. 'China is increasingly a new frontier for young designers,' said Andrea Batilla, director of Milan's Instituto Europeo di Design fashion school.
More than a dozen Nottingham Trent students specializing in fashion and textile design have taken jobs in China during the past two years, said Tim O'Brien, the university's director of international development. Nottingham Trent has also been flying professors to Hong Kong to teach at local universities in disciplines such as knitwear design.
At Shanghai Sales Clothing, which makes apparel for brands including Banana Republic and Marc by Marc Jacobs, Scottish-born Marianne Atkins has led a design team the past six years. Her language and technical skills are selling points for the company. She regularly travels from her base in Hong Kong to New York with prototypes that she can tweak according to clients' tastes and email back to factories in China for production.
'Having a European designer has certainly become a great advantage for Chinese companies,' said Angelo Uslenghi, a fabric trends forecaster for the Moda In/Milano Unica textile makers' fair. The designers' ideas are playing a role in everything from the color combinations the Chinese mills choose to the material and fabric design, he noted.
Mr. Ng's goal at Colour Couture, a unit of Hong Kong textile maker Unison Group Holding, is to become an intermediary, stoking interest in his yarns among U.S. and European companies and putting them in touch with Chinese manufacturers that he supplies. When foreign brands 'depend more on you, you can charge extra,' he said.
Soon after moving from Nottingham to Shanghai, Ms. Hintz found her new life bore little resemblance to the career she had envisioned back in Europe. Working in an apartment in Shanghai that she shared with fellow recruits, she put in 16-hour days to churn out collections on the manufacturer's tight production schedule.
Life outside the design studio was even more of a struggle -- for the designers and their boss. The recruits from Nottingham didn't speak Chinese, so Mr. Ng arranged to have a company car chauffeur them around town. At restaurants, Mr. Ng did the ordering; at business meetings, he handled the translation.
The caretaking, he said, was worth the trouble, because the trio delivered a 70-piece collection of what he calls 'eccentric English' designs that he marketed to potential buyers. When Mr. Ng last October landed a meeting with Abercrombie & Fitch Co., a brand known for its preppy aesthetic, he arrived with armloads of look books, clothing prototypes and Ms. Gould in tow. Though he hasn't yet made a sale to the company, the buyers were impressed by his recruit's work and her demeanor, he said. An Abercrombie & Fitch spokesman declined to comment.
As Colour Couture's commercial outlook brightened, however, frustration was setting in among its design team. Ms. Hintz said she yearned for a mentor who could guide her work and fire her imagination. In Mr. Ng she found a businessman who held meetings in karaoke bars.
Mr. Ng says his design preferences didn't always square with the designers' creative impulses. 'I saw things in more of a commercial way, so there's been -- I wouldn't say a fight, but compromises were made.'
All three Nottingham designers quit after five months.
Mr. Ng. is now on the hunt for new talent. He said he hopes to find designers with 'more experience,' and doesn't think he'll have much trouble. 'Everyone wants to come here to explore this market,' he said.
Meanwhile, Ms. Gould has landed another gig designing knitwear for a manufacturer -- this time in Hong Kong.
去年夏天，Peter Ng远赴英格兰的诺丁汉特伦特大学(Nottingham Trent University)招聘一批年轻的时尚设计师。诺丁汉特伦特大学的设计学院是欧洲顶尖设计学院之一。
与他见面的那些应聘者都梦想为米兰和巴黎的时装公司工作，而身为Colour Couture纺纱厂总监的Ng提供的则是一个完全不同的机会：在上海工作，为该公司生产的纱制品设计系列产品，销售给像Abercrombie & Fitch这样的美国时尚品牌。
几个星期后，Ng回到上海，热烈欢迎三位从诺丁汉特伦特大学招聘来的设计师，其中两位分别是刚24岁的萝拉.欣茨(Laura Hintz)和22岁的埃莉诺.古尔德(Eleanor Gould)，她们都是本科毕业生。
中国服装厂商－－从纺织厂到制衣厂－－纷纷进军新的领地：为全球顶尖品牌提供专业的设计，而不是简单地遵从它们的指示。Ng网罗人才的举动正是这个潮流的一个缩影。这些厂商打著这样的小算盘：通过聘请内部设计师，加快新产品系列出炉的进度，在激烈的国内市场中赢得优势后，他们的服务价格自然就水涨船高。但这些公司也慢慢发现自己在培养创意人才方面的困难。“跟设计师一起工作不太容易，”Ng说。
如今，许多行业的中国厂商都不再满足于单纯为其他企业生产低成本产品，他们正在尝试向价值链的上游迈进，并且都取得了不同程度的成功。时尚品牌在中国生产产品已经有多年的历史，但中国土生土长的设计师则非常稀缺。对中国年轻人来说，时尚设计还是一个新领域，本土设计师往往很难摸准西方的品位。
中国企业对创意人才的需求日益增长，西方的大学因此也成为这些纺织厂商眼中的人才库。“中国正日益成为年轻设计师的新地界，”米兰欧洲设计学院(Instituto Europeo di Design)负责人安德莉亚.巴蒂亚(Andrea Batilla)说道。
据诺丁汉特伦特大学国际发展部负责人蒂姆.奥布赖恩(Tim O'Brien)称，过去两年，该校已经有十多名时装和纺织设计专业毕业生在中国工作。诺丁汉特伦特大学也经常派教授前往香港当地大学授课，教授针织品设计等课程。
出生于苏格兰的玛丽安娜.阿特金斯(Marianne Atkins)过去六年一直在Shanghai Sales Clothing公司带领一个设计团队，这家公司给Banana Republic、Marc by Marc Jacobs等品牌生产服装。她的言语优势和技术是公司的大卖点，她定期携设计样板从香港大本营飞到纽约，根据客户的喜好修改设计，然后用电子邮件发回给中国的工厂生产。
“欧洲设计师的加盟无疑会成为中国公司的一大优势，”Moda In/Milano Unica纺织厂商博览会的织物潮流预测师安杰罗.乌斯伦奇(Angelo Uslenghi)说。他指出，从中国纺织厂的颜色搭配到材料及织物的设计，这些设计师的想法在方方面面都发挥影响。
Ng的目标是充当一个中介，吸引欧美厂商对他的纱制品产生兴趣，然后为欧美厂商和他供货的中国企业牵线搭桥。他说，外国品牌“越依赖你，你就越能开高价”。Ng所在的Colour Couture是香港服装企业Unison Group Holding的下属企业。
从诺丁汉搬到上海后不久，欣茨就发现新生活跟自己在欧洲时所构想的职场生活毫不相像。她和另两位一起过来的同伴同住一间公寓，那里也是她们的工作室，她们要每天工作16个小时才能赶上公司紧张的生产计划。
设计室外的生活更不轻松－－不管对于这些设计师还是她们的老板来说都是如此。这些从诺丁汉来的设计师不会说中文，于是Ng安排一辆专车带她们到城里转悠，下馆子的时候他点菜，开商务会议时他翻译。
但他说，这些麻烦是值得的，因为这个三人组完成一个他称之为“另类英伦”的产品系列，共70款服饰，他把这个系列推销给潜在的客户。去年10月，Ng与以Preppy学院时尚风格著称的Abercrombie & Fitch Co.面谈，他怀抱一摞摞时装册和样品，携古尔德一同前往。据他说，虽然那次没有成交，但设计师的创意和她的气质给客户留下了很深的印象。Abercrombie & Fitch发言人拒绝对此评论。
尽管Colour Couture的商业前景日益明亮，挫折感却慢慢在设计团队内蔓延。欣茨表示自己渴望遇到一位能指导她工作、激发她灵感的导师，但在Ng身上，她看到的不过是一个在卡拉OK酒吧里应酬的商人。
Ng称自己对设计的喜好不总是跟设计师的创意灵感一致。“我更多的是从商业的角度考虑，所以会有矛盾－－不能说是冲突，但我们会相互让步。”
五个月后，三位诺丁汉设计师都辞职了。
Ng开始物色新的人选。他希望能找到“更有经验”的设计师，而且觉得这并非难事。他说，所有人都想来探索中国市场。
与此同时，古尔德找到了另一份设计工作，为一个生产商设计针织品－－不过，这一次工作地点是在香港。
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