JUICE MY v Juice KL
Anyone with their ears to the Asian streewear scene would know Juice is the streetwear store started by Edison Chen and Kevin Poon. But that was not the only reason for the craziness that ensued on the opening day of the 1st Juice store in the SEA region. Located right here in Bangsar Baru KL, blame HK’s news-headlining bad boy Edison Chen, who was flown in, along with his HK partner Kevin Poon and Malaysia partner Edwin Choong of Sole What?, to do the officials. Waiting for our interview was like being in the eye of the storm: all calm inside, as the frenzy of fans and curious passers-by raged outside. We even spotted girls touching up their make-up in anticipation for Edison’s arrival. When our turn finally arrived, mag and streetwear brand faced off – in a friendly way, of course.
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There are so many streetwear brands out there. What separates Clot Clothing from the rest?
Edison Clot Clothing is one of the 1st youth-orientated brands that took on Chinese inspiration. Most of the products that created in the beginning were heavily Chinese-influenced. We grew and built our reputation on that. One of our main goals is to bridge East and West to make a happy union out of it, so that’s what we’re trying to do with our clothing. A lot of my friends in America cannot fit our clothing because we’re making clothes for Asians. A lot of the Chinese community relate because fashion is so heavily European, American and Japanese. We also want the youth to believe that one day, they can be a top designer or that Chinese people can have a brand that means something worldwide and not just locally. Clot actually means a gathering point for fresh, funky and new ideas that kinda explode out. That’s the whole theme of my company, which is why we always collaborate with people because we wanna bring mix and match ideas to the Chinese community.
This is your first Juice store in SEA. Will we be seeing more Juice stores around the world?
Edison Hopefully by the end of 2010, we’ll have 5 or 7 stores. Right now we’re focusing on Asia. I am living in America right now and I really wanna open a store there, but with the economy, I think it’s more important for us to build at home. If our foundation at home is not steady, when we go across the sea, we won’t succeed. I would say our main focus right now is South-East Asia, China and Hong Kong. Then we’ll start thinking about moving elsewhere.
If you could give Juice store a song, what would it be?
Kevin I think it would be a song that skips all the time to different tracks. (This elicits laughter from around the room.) I think our attention span is very short.
Does that mean we can expect regular changes from Clot and Juice?
Kevin Every year we’re changing and we’re still learning, and embracing this whole Malaysia operation, what works here and what doesn’t. For example, there isn’t winter in Malaysia. We have to make clothes to cater to the hotter climate.
Edison On top of that, the street market over here is very young so a lot of crazy and newer ideas from Hong Kong or Japan might not be accepted here. I think we have to treat this as an infant market for street culture and build it off that. We have very good experience from what we built in Hong Kong. We nurtured a group of local people to understand and follow what Clot represents. I wanna add, we’ve only done clothing seasons since last Fall/Winter (08). Before, everything was a spot item. Now, we make it according to season but we learn from hit and miss. Some things have been great and some not so great. Through the 2 seasons of going to the factory, checking samples and coming out with designs, Fall/Winter 09 is something I’m very proud of. I just finished checking samples in Japan. I’m just waiting for it to come, so I can wear the clothes!
Congratulations Juice KL!
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RELATED LINKS
JUICE reports from the much hyped launch of the region’s 1st Juice store.
Snaps from the launch of the all new Juice store in Bangsar.
Complete Juice store details and store description.
