Five Indian restaurants made it to the list of 101 best Asian restaurants.

Din Tai Fung in the Taiwanese capital Taipei was ranked number one in the inaugural “101 Best Restaurants in Asia” list, released on Thursday by the U.S.-based food website The Daily Meal, which does similar polls in the United States and Europe.

“Ultimately we chose … a place best-known for doing one thing absolutely perfectly,” said Colman Andrews, editorial director of The Daily Meal, adding that they were aware their selection of the restaurant, which has spun off into an international chain, would be controversial.

Half of the top ten restaurants were in Beijing, with Duck de Chine – noted for its Peking duck – at second place, and the Chinese-style nouvelle cuisine Green T. House at third.

“Our feeling is that Shanghai has had a good reputation as a restaurant city for some time, due both to a strong regional cuisine and the early incursions of Western celebrity chefs … but that Beijing is definitely catching up,” said Andrews.

“It’s an imperfect analogy, but in a way the culinary contrast between the two mirrors that between New York City and Washington D.C. The former is more famous as a food city, but Washington increasingly offers serious competition – usually just with a little less fanfare.”

Food critics, writers and long-term foreign residents in Asia, among others, voted on a list of restaurants pulled together over a six-month nomination period, considering cuisine, style, value and overall buzz, to select the top 101.

Beijing’s Temple Restaurant was fourth and Capital M, a modern Australian restaurant overlooking Tiananmen Square, was fifth. Another Beijing establishment, Dali Court, hit seventh.

Varq, in New Delhi, came in sixth. The top ten was rounded out by Hong Kong’s venerable Lung King Heen and Michel Bras TOYA, Japon, a Michelin three-star restaurant on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido.

Andrews said that Asia’s flourishing restaurant scene was developing some interesting new trends. Apart from Varq, four other Indian restaurants made the list — Orient Express and Bukhara in New Delhi; Indigo in Mumbai and Karavalli in Bangalore.

“India, indeed, will continue to develop in restaurant terms – and I hope not entirely through the efforts of the top hotel chains – but I also think South Korea shows great promise, and frankly I’m surprised that more of its top restaurants didn’t place on our list,” Andrews said.

The top Korean restaurant was The Byeokje Galbi in Seoul, which came in at 30.

The list included restaurants in Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Macau, South Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam and can be found here: <here>

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

Din Tai Fung in the Taiwanese capital Taipei was ranked number one in the inaugural “101 Best Restaurants in Asia” list, released on Thursday by the U.S.-based food website The Daily Meal, which does similar polls in the United States and Europe.

“Ultimately we chose … a place best-known for doing one thing absolutely perfectly,” said Colman Andrews, editorial director of The Daily Meal, adding that they were aware their selection of the restaurant, which has spun off into an international chain, would be controversial.

Half of the top ten restaurants were in Beijing, with Duck de Chine – noted for its Peking duck – at second place, and the Chinese-style nouvelle cuisine Green T. House at third.

“Our feeling is that Shanghai has had a good reputation as a restaurant city for some time, due both to a strong regional cuisine and the early incursions of Western celebrity chefs … but that Beijing is definitely catching up,” said Andrews.

“It’s an imperfect analogy, but in a way the culinary contrast between the two mirrors that between New York City and Washington D.C. The former is more famous as a food city, but Washington increasingly offers serious competition – usually just with a little less fanfare.”

Food critics, writers and long-term foreign residents in Asia, among others, voted on a list of restaurants pulled together over a six-month nomination period, considering cuisine, style, value and overall buzz, to select the top 101.

Beijing’s Temple Restaurant was fourth and Capital M, a modern Australian restaurant overlooking Tiananmen Square, was fifth. Another Beijing establishment, Dali Court, hit seventh.

Varq, in the Indian capital New Delhi, came in sixth. The top ten was rounded out by Hong Kong’s venerable Lung King Heen and Michel Bras TOYA, Japon, a Michelin three-star restaurant on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido.

Andrews said that Asia’s flourishing restaurant scene was developing some interesting new trends. Five Indian restaurants made the list, including one in Bangalore.

“India, indeed, will continue to develop in restaurant terms – and I hope not entirely through the efforts of the top hotel chains – but I also think South Korea shows great promise, and frankly I’m surprised that more of its top restaurants didn’t place on our list.”

The top Korean restaurant was The Byeokje Galbi in Seoul, which came in at 30.

The list included restaurants in Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Macau, South Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam and can be found here: here

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

Crowded security lines at Tehran’s airport, shouting, a girl chasing her twin as a woman in a long coat holds her hand. That is the memory Saba Hafezi clings to after her mother and sister vanish in a haunting tale by Dina Nayeri.

Nayeri left Iran at the age of ten for the United States. She grew up in Oklahoma and worked as an investment banker before starting to write fiction, first collaborating with her brother on a series of young adult books. This is her first adult novel.

Nayeri, who said her book was sparked by a trip to Greece that brought many memories to the surface, spoke to Reuters about writing, exile and its impact on storytelling.

Q: Why twins and why tell the story from the point of view of the one left behind?

A: When I was first thinking of the idea, I was a little bit obsessed with the idea of what I would have been like if I’d stayed in Iran, what my life would have turned out to be. I started thinking about writing about two sisters, one of whom stayed in Iran and one who went to America, to have their lives be parallel, to have both of them be real and living their lives in the different ways.

I wanted there to be this magical realism where all the parallels in their lives would be happening through some kind of magic of twinness. Eventually, after several drafts and a couple of years working on it, I realized it would be much more powerful if it was the story of one of the sisters, about longing for the other life — to have that element of loss and longing. Then I started thinking the story I really wanted to tell was the one in Iran.

Q: People have always said being away from a place allows you to write about it more clearly. Did this help you come to terms with having left Iran, is that part of it?

A: Yes and no. I definitely unearthed that longing inside myself but I also found all the ways I could fulfill that here. I found a lot of Iranian communities, really exiled Iranians, and compared their experiences to mine. I discovered music and food and all these wonderful things. In that sense, I came to terms with the results of this. On the other hand, it does make me want to go back more. I interviewed people with just beautiful stories and I have so many friends who every summer go back. It makes me sad that I don’t quite feel safe going back yet. I think one day I will and that’s where it’s all headed.

Q: What was the hardest part of writing this and what was the easiest, the most fun?

A: The hardest part — there are two different aspects of it. The first was just trusting myself as a writer, because all my education and adulthood was in the business world and I didn’t know what it would take to be a good writer. There was a lot of studying on my own. At one point I went on Amazon and ordered 50 prize-winning novels of the last five years. It was fun, but it was hard to get that confidence in my voice and discover the voice of the novel.

I don’t know that any part of it was easy but the most fun part was all of the interviews and all of the details and stories I was gathering from people. I’m a natural extrovert and so I don’t like solitude as much as most writers, I love to be around people. So calling up dozens and dozens of people and getting them to tell me stories, making sense of it and writing up little scenes and sending it back to them, seeing if they’d be okay using it, that was the most delightful part.

Q: Every family has stories they tell – how does the whole idea of exile affect the stories that are told?

A: Obviously storytelling is a very human thing and it’s universal, but in my family, we were such huge storytellers even beyond that. There was never any time when somebody wasn’t telling a story or begging for a story. I think what happened as a result of exile is that some of those became mythologized.

I remember that stories from home dried up because we were no longer at home and having that kind of access. Suddenly that pool of stories kept getting repeated over and over again until they took on this mythic element in my mind. I really believe there are some stories in my family history that are just full of lies now because they’ve taken on a magic quality that can’t possibly be … There are things that just become more storybook as years pass and you have no more access to those people, particularly people that have passed on in the 25 years since I’ve been away – for example, my grandfather.

He would tell stories constantly. He would sit in the little town square in the village with the other old men and smoke the hookah and they would talk and talk. Some of the things he said and did, and some of the things from his youth, might as well be from a storybook now, they can’t possibly be real.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; editing by Patricia Reaney)

The video for “Gangnam Style” is the most watched ever on
YouTube with more than 1.5 billion hits, and its horse-riding
dance has been imitated by thousands around the world, from Eton
schoolboys, to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

But a recent challenge from the “Harlem Shake” global dance
craze upped the ante for “Gentleman”, and the 35-year-old Psy
has made it clear he was aware of the high expectations.

“Of course I feel more burden than before, because lots of
people are watching,” he told a news conference before the
concert. “(Today’s show) is a performance of thanks for the
‘Gangnam Style’ success.”

The video for “Gentleman”, whose refrain is “I’m a mother
father gentleman”, featured a fast, hip-swinging dance by Psy in
his trademark sunglasses and a variety of jackets, from baby
blue to hot pink and sparkly white.

Fans, many of them dressed in white as Psy had requested
before the concert, packed the 50,000 seats at Seoul’s World Cup
Stadium. The concert was also streamed live on the Internet.

“Gentleman”, released on Friday at midnight, had more than
1.2 million hits on YouTube for the song alone before the
concert. It was 90th on the Apple iTunes store chart.

“I thought it was really good, really funny. It is hard to
compare with the classic though. ‘Gangnam Style’ is perfect,”
said Mark McKeon, a 25-year-old English teacher at the concert,
who said he thought the new song still would do well.

Others said the video helped. “When I listened to just the
song, it wasn’t good, but it is now okay with lots of dancers
dancing together,” tweeted one Korean man.

ROCKY ROAD TO FAME

Psy, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, graduated from
Berklee College of Music in the United States but had a rocky
decade in show business before “Gangnam Style” rocketed him to
global fame.

His debut 2001 album, “Psy from the Psycho World”, ran into
trouble with the authorities for “inappropriate content” in the
lead song, which was seen as sexually suggestive. He was charged
with possession of marijuana in 2002.

He released five more albums.

Psy’s brash style – at Saturday’s concert, he danced to a
Beyonce song in a skimpy bodysuit – contrasts sharply with the
polished stars that dominate K-pop, an increasing presence on
the world stage.

A Music Industry White Paper published by the Korean
Creative Content Agency said sales of K-pop outside Korea surged
135 percent in 2011 to $196 million. In 2006, overseas sales
were worth $16.7 million.

“Gangnam Style” racked up 3.59 million digital sales in the
United States and Canada last year, according to Nielsen
SoundScan and Nielsen BDS, ninth in the best-selling list. It
was third on Amazon’s MP3 song bestseller list for 2012.

But it has been challenged by “Harlem Shake”, an electronic
dance track by DJ Baauer released last year that went viral as a
YouTube craze after Australian teenagers posted their version of
the dance, sparking thousands of imitations.

(Editing by Jon Hemming)

The video for “Gangnam Style” has become the most watched item on YouTube with more than 1.5 billion hits and Psy’s horse-riding moves sparked an international dance craze.

The details of his latest single, “Gentleman”, were kept under wraps until the song was released at midnight in New Zealand (1200 GMT).

The song, with a techno beat, was full of puns in Korean and contained the lines “I am a party mafia!” and the refrain, “I am a mother father gentleman”.

Psy, 35, will perform “Gentleman” in public for the first time on Saturday at a concert at Seoul’s World Cup stadium but he has been coy about what dance to expect this time, except to hint that it is based on traditional Korean moves.

“All Koreans know this dance but (those in) other countries haven’t seen it,” Psy told South Korean television last week.

He has asked fans to wear white to Saturday’s event and his stylist told Reuters last month that the concept for the new song would again be a formal suit with “an unexpected twist of fun”.

In “Gangnam Style”, written as a commentary on materialism in the wealthy Seoul suburb of Gangnam, Psy was decked out in sunglasses, a white dress shirt, bow tie and tuxedo jackets.

The song racked up 3.59 million digital sales last year in the United States and Canada, according to Nielsen SoundScan and Nielsen BDS, putting it ninth in the best-selling list. It was third on Amazon’s MP3 song bestseller list for 2012.

“Gangnam Style” catapulted Psy to global fame after an rocky career in the music business over the past decade.

Psy, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, graduated from the Berklee College of Music in the United States and made his debut in 2001 with the album “PSY from the Psycho World”.

But he ran into trouble with the authorities for “inappropriate” content in the lead song on that album, which was seen as sexually suggestive. He was also charged with possession of marijuana in 2002.

Since then he has released five more albums.

Psy’s brash style – at a concert last year he parodied Lady Gaga, complete with fake breasts that he set on fire – stands in stark contrast to the squeaky clean singers that dominate K-pop which is finding an increasingly large international audience.

A Music Industry White Paper published by the Korean Creative Content Agency said sales of K-pop outside Korea surged 135 percent in 2011 from a year earlier to $196 million. In 2006 overseas sales were worth $16.7 million.

Psy acknowledged last month that the stress of following up Gangnam was taking its toll.

He tweeted a picture of himself covering his face at a recording studio, with the caption: “The pain of creation.”

(Reporting by Narae Kim, writing by Elaine Lies, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

“The Cat”, by award-winning Israeli-born author Edeet Ravel,
got its start from the July 2011 news that a gunman had opened
fire at a youth camp on a Norwegian holiday island, killing 77
people, setting off a compulsion that had her writing so rapidly
she completed a draft of the book in six weeks.

Ravel spoke with Reuters about her writing, loss and why she
chose a cat to help her heroine back to life.

Q: What got this book started?

A: I began writing the book on July 23, 2011, a day that I
remember very well because it was the day after the horrific
attack in Norway. I read about the terrible tragedy and I
thought of the parents. Many writers try to understand these
horrific events by writing about the event itself – the
violence, the perpetrators, the victims – but I turned my
attention to the bereaved parents, and friends and relatives,
because their lives can never be the same, and I began writing
“The Cat”.

With this novel, even though it was extremely hard to write
- in fact, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my writing
career – I had at the same time a compulsion to tell Elise’s
story. That was really unlike anything I’d ever experienced
before. I simply couldn’t stop writing. I’d go to bed scratching
sentences in the dark as I fell asleep. I woke up with sentences
ready to go and I’d have to rush to the computer to get it all
down before doing anything else. I had to leave my exercise
class to scribble sentences in the margin of the schedule. Like
the time that I left a bar mitzvah in the middle and I went to
the ladies’ room and I began scribbling on the bar mitzvah
program. It was going on constantly for about six weeks, until
the first draft was finished.

Q: Why was there such a compulsion?

A: I think it was something that had been on my mind for a
very long time because I was close to two people who lost
children, and because as a parent, like all parents, I live
daily with my inability to protect my child from harm, try as I
may. So it’s a very emotional topic and probably because it was
so difficult to write I pushed it away and tried not to write
it. I think there was a build-up. There will always be things we
can’t control with our children, and yet the loss of a child is
unimaginable – except that a parent lives with that possibility
every minute of every day, from the minute our child is born.

Q: What was your relationship with Elise through this intense
process?

A: Elise took over the novel. I always have an entire world
set up in my mind before I begin writing, but even more so in
this case. It can take years but in the case of “The Cat”, it
was almost instantaneous. I knew who Elise was, I knew where she
lived, I knew her story and her son’s story, where she came from
and what she felt about everything. So I would say that this was
a case where the story led the way and I followed.

Q: She came into your head fully developed?

A: Yes. It must have happened overnight because I read about
the events and I went to sleep. I think I was thinking about
what had happened all night. When I woke up, I just wrote on my
computer screen “The Cat”.

Q: When you were living so closely and intensely with that
world, was that hard for you?

A: Yes. During the time that I was writing, I can’t remember
what else I was doing. The novel took over my life and I was
writing every free minute that I had, and it was very emotional.
It was difficult. I was extremely involved in the story and I
felt that I was not inventing events. In one sense I was
creating a fictional world, but in another sense I was writing
about something so real that happens, sadly, to so many people.

Q: Why a cat, why not a dog?

A: I think that she would not have forgotten, even for a few
minutes, that she had a dog to take care of. When she comes home
from the hospital, she actually has forgotten that there’s a cat
in the house. Of course, cats can hide away in a corner and be
very quiet and unnoticeable, they can blend in.

That beloved creature is the key to her survival, and the
cat represents both the spiritual dimension that keeps her alive
but also, I think, a more primal energy or instinct that gives
us the energy to go on after a loss like that… I was thinking
in terms of both that instinct and the spiritual dimension.

Q: Cats give you more space in general.

A: Yes. A dog can actually communicate more directly. Many
dogs have that ability to communicate with humans, but with the
cat there’s more guesswork involved … (It’s) a mirror of her
isolation, the mystery and the inability to understand what has
happened to her.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies, editing by Paul Casciato)

But an Everest-obsessed coworker at an outdoor equipment store introduced her to Mallory, the controversy about whether he summited the world’s highest peak, and video footage from his 1920s expeditions, and she found it impossible to get him out of her head – until finally writing, years later, her debut novel, “Above all Things”.

The book, which also tells the story of Mallory’s wife Ruth as she waits for her husband and tends their children, was based partly on the couple’s actual letters – including some found on Mallory’s body in 1999, 75 years after his death.

Rideout spoke to Reuters about Mallory – famed for saying “because it’s there” when asked why he wanted to climb Everest – her book, and Everest, the 8,850 meter (29,035 ft) peak conquered by Sir Edmund Hillary 60 years ago this May.

Q: What got you going on this book and Everest?

A: Everest was already something I really didn’t get … why would people do that? Then you sort of throw that colonial glamour onto it, for lack of a better word – them in their tweeds, massive backpacks and their crates of champagne. (I thought) okay, I need to know more about this. And as I started reading, I pretty quickly got taken away by Mallory in particular. Ridiculously good-looking, incredibly charismatic and moved in all the right circles, a last Renaissance man. The last and great British explorer of that era. I would joke with my friends about if it’s possible to be in love with somebody who’d been dead for eighty years, I probably am.

Q: He was certainly very attractive, but your book of course features his wife as well. Was she in there from the start?

A: Ruth was always in the book. When I first started playing with it, I actually thought of telling the whole thing from her point of view but that became very limiting for obvious reasons really quickly. I studied a lot of women’s studies and women writers at university, and women’s history is important. People behind the scenes in history I think are getting much more of their due these days in fiction.

What interested me about the story as well was the myth-making of it, how we make these heroes. So to have Ruth’s point of view was a way to disrupt the mythology around someone like George Mallory and to be able to see him as much more of a fully realized character and not just as an epic climber that did this incredibly brave and crazy thing.

Q: The sections with the climb: how did you imagine it?

A: I started doing a very, very little bit of climbing. I attempted my first ever somewhat substantial climb earlier this year, on holiday in Hawaii – my husband and I tried to summit Mauna Loa. I didn’t quite make the top, I had my first experience of altitude sickness, it was terrible – but I had a bizarre moment where I was standing there and said, oh, I was writing about this for seven years, this is what it feels like. The cold’s easy, I live in Canada, so the cold is always there. I read a ton, there are so many great books out there about high-altitude climbing, other peoples’ stories and things that they imagine or hallucinate. That was what drew me to it originally, what happens to your body at these extremes, and where does your brain go under the circumstances.

Q: He’s out having all these adventures, and there’s Ruth at home. What was it like to go between these two characters?

A: I thought Ruth would be easier, at the beginning. We’ve all stayed home while somebody else, a friend or partner, has gone off to do something that seems so much more interesting than what we’re doing, going through the routine of our lives. I thought that would be so easy to write because I knew what that felt like. But it took a lot longer to get into Ruth’s head, partly because of the limits of the era and gender and class. How to balance that all, how to make her small, intimate emotional dramas be as big and important as an avalanche on Everest. It took a while…I read a lot of short stories, trying to almost make each of her sections a short story on its own. Her life needs to be as important as George’s, because it is.

Q: How did you finally resolve the question of whether he summited or not?

A: Part of the reason I wanted to write the book was to puzzle out for myself what happened on that last climb….Personally, I think it depends on what day you ask me, whether he made it or not. On more romantic days I think he absolutely did, and on my more realistic days I think he probably didn’t quite make it.

Q: What is it about Everest?

A: If only I knew. I just don’t understand it and I think it’s because I don’t understand it that I put so much time into reading about it and learning about it. It still sounds utterly horrible. I would love to do the trek out to Base Camp and look at that mountain, but you could not pay me to ever even think about climbing it. It’s a weird presence in our culture.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies)

But an Everest-obsessed coworker at an outdoor equipment
store introduced her to Mallory, the controversy about whether
he summited the world’s highest peak, and video footage from his
1920s expeditions, and she found it impossible to get him out of
her head – until finally writing, years later, her debut novel,
“Above all Things”.

The book, which also tells the story of Mallory’s wife Ruth
as she waits for her husband and tends their children, was based
partly on the couple’s actual letters – including some found on
Mallory’s body in 1999, 75 years after his death.

Rideout spoke to Reuters about Mallory – famed for saying
“because it’s there” when asked why he wanted to climb Everest -
her book, and Everest, the 8,850 metre (29,035 ft) peak
conquered by Sir Edmund Hillary 60 years ago this May.

Q: What got you going on this book and Everest?

A: Everest was already something I really didn’t get … why
would people do that? Then you sort of throw that colonial
glamour onto it, for lack of a better word – them in their
tweeds, massive backpacks and their crates of champagne. (I
thought) okay, I need to know more about this. And as I started
reading, I pretty quickly got taken away by Mallory in
particular. Ridiculously good-looking, incredibly charismatic
and moved in all the right circles, a last Renaissance man. The
last and great British explorer of that era. I would joke with
my friends about if it’s possible to be in love with somebody
who’d been dead for eighty years, I probably am.

Q: He was certainly very attractive, but your book of course
features his wife as well. Was she in there from the start?

A: Ruth was always in the book. When I first started playing
with it, I actually thought of telling the whole thing from her
point of view but that became very limiting for obvious reasons
really quickly. I studied a lot of women’s studies and women
writers at university, and women’s history is important. People
behind the scenes in history I think are getting much more of
their due these days in fiction.

What interested me about the story as well was the
myth-making of it, how we make these heroes. So to have Ruth’s
point of view was a way to disrupt the mythology around someone
like George Mallory and to be able to see him as much more of a
fully realized character and not just as an epic climber that
did this incredibly brave and crazy thing.

Q: The sections with the climb: how did you imagine it?

A: I started doing a very, very little bit of climbing. I
attempted my first ever somewhat substantial climb earlier this
year, on holiday in Hawaii – my husband and I tried to summit
Mauna Loa. I didn’t quite make the top, I had my first
experience of altitude sickness, it was terrible – but I had a
bizarre moment where I was standing there and said, oh, I was
writing about this for seven years, this is what it feels like.
The cold’s easy, I live in Canada, so the cold is always there.
I read a ton, there are so many great books out there about
high-altitude climbing, other peoples’ stories and things that
they imagine or hallucinate. That was what drew me to it
originally, what happens to your body at these extremes, and
where does your brain go under the circumstances.

Q: He’s out having all these adventures, and there’s Ruth at
home. What was it like to go between these two characters?

A: I thought Ruth would be easier, at the beginning. We’ve
all stayed home while somebody else, a friend or partner, has
gone off to do something that seems so much more interesting
than what we’re doing, going through the routine of our lives. I
thought that would be so easy to write because I knew what that
felt like. But it took a lot longer to get into Ruth’s head,
partly because of the limits of the era and gender and class.
How to balance that all, how to make her small, intimate
emotional dramas be as big and important as an avalanche on
Everest. It took a while…I read a lot of short stories, trying
to almost make each of her sections a short story on its own.
Her life needs to be as important as George’s, because it is.

Q: How did you finally resolve the question of whether he
summited or not?

A: Part of the reason I wanted to write the book was to
puzzle out for myself what happened on that last
climb….Personally, I think it depends on what day you ask me,
whether he made it or not. On more romantic days I think he
absolutely did, and on my more realistic days I think he
probably didn’t quite make it.

Q: What is it about Everest?

A: If only I knew. I just don’t understand it and I think
it’s because I don’t understand it that I put so much time into
reading about it and learning about it. It still sounds utterly
horrible. I would love to do the trek out to Base Camp and look
at that mountain, but you could not pay me to ever even think
about climbing it. It’s a weird presence in our culture.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies)

The 32-year-old American designer, who is known mainly for
her luxury handbags, has positioned Asia as a key part of the
growth plan for the company she runs with her brother.

Minkoff, who showed her fall/winter collection at Japan
Fashion Week, opened her store in Tokyo’s trendy Ginza district
in early 2012 and her New York shop will throw open its doors
this year.

“We saw that there was tremendous opportunity,” Minkoff said
in an interview at the store. “From the beginning here we
thought our consumer has really embraced the brand.”

Chinese consumers have become the world’s leading buyers of
luxury goods, accounting for one quarter of the market globally
with demand growing, according to a report by consulting firm
Bain & Co.

Minkoff said the Ginza store was definitely one way to
capture the Chinese market.

“It’s refreshing for a tourist to walk in and buy several
pieces when they were thinking of one designer handbag. Here
they can walk in and buy three for the same price.”

The most popular bag is the brand’s Mini MAC, which sell for
26,000 yen ($270). The company does some exclusive bag models
for the Japanese market, and much of the apparel is also
designed with Japan in mind.

“We call ourselves a ‘sexy tomboy brand’ but there are ways
of being sexy here that are different from the United States,”
Minkoff said. “I think here it’s more tame – a lot of layering -
so we make pieces that you can layer with as well.”

POWERED BY SOCIAL MEDIA

Japanese interest came relatively soon after Minkoff decided
to begin making bags in 2004. Much of the growth has been
powered by strategic use of social media, including a blog,
Facebook, Twitter and a YouTube channel.

Overall revenue projections for 2013 are $70 million,
Minkoff said, up from $52 million to $53 million in 2012. While
80 percent of the company’s business is in the United States,
the part that is overseas is seen as the biggest growth
opportunity.

The company is aiming to open five retail stores within the
next two to three years, including some in China.

“We don’t have any plans ironed out but it’s definitely one
of the places that we’re very seriously targeting,” she said.
“(And) we’re going to be opening stores in Korea, that’s already
in the planning phases.”

Although growth in China slowed last year, Bain is still
forecasting growth of 4 percent to 6 percent a year for the
global luxury market through 2015.

“When it happens in China, Korea and here it’ll be a really
nice trifecta, because we’ve always had great customers from
these three places,” Minkoff said.

“We’ve had interest from India but we want to get our
foothold into these places… We don’t want to over-expand. We
want to get strong and have each place be stable.”

Koshino’s collection, “Floral Memories,” was a highlight of
the final days of Japan Fashion Week, showing the autumn and
winter collections of 2013-14, which ends this week.

Koshino, at 76 one of Japan’s more enduring internationally
known designers, featured flowers and combined her
characteristic look of draped and folded fabrics recalling
traditional kimonos and centuries-old textile patterns with
accents of sequins and pink.

Short, sheath-like dresses in bright colors were paired with
quilting, leather and touches of fur. She accentuated loose gray
dresses with elbow-length leather gloves and epaulets.

“I wanted to consider what’s beautiful in the world, and
that’s flowers. My version of flowers isn’t romantic but rather
a vision of art,” she said in an interview.

“I wanted to give the clothing the suggestion of flower buds
swelling, draping and rounded at the shoulders.”

Koshino is the eldest of three daughters. Her father, a
tailor, died in World War Two and she was raised by her mother,
who ran a clothing store. Her bent towards fashion was
encouraged by her mother, who fostered a competitive atmosphere
at home.

All three girls – Hiroko, Junko and Michiko Koshino – became
famous in the fashion industry, with Junko developing strong
ties with China and Michiko basing herself in London. They were
the subject of a TV series on Japanese broadcaster NHK that ran
from 2011 to 2012.

Koshino’s daughter Yuma is also a designer and will be
showing her Yuma Koshino brand on March 22.

ASIAN INFLUENCE

“It’s always Asian with me. This is an idiosyncrasy of
mine,” Koshino said. “But I try for a new fusion of East and
West.”

Asia has been a key theme of the week, with designers taking
aim at Chinese consumers who have become the world’s leading
buyers of luxury goods, accounting for a quarter of the market
globally, according to a report by consulting firm Bain & Co.

Although growth in China slowed last year, Bain is still
forecasting growth of 4 percent to 6 percent a year for the
global luxury market through 2015. It grew 10 percent in 2012 to
about $280 billion, mainly driven by Chinese consumers.

Earlier in the week, Chinese-born Vivienne Tam presented a
collection that fused Asian influences with modern styles with
lots of reds reminiscent of the vermilion of traditional China.

“I was inspired by the conceptual underpinnings of the punk
movement,” she said in a statement. “Questioning the status quo
and celebrating individuality but also uniting in our cultural
identities, embracing paradox and life’s essence: yin and yang.”

Red dresses with inserts of leather fell straight from the
shoulder, while others bore cartoonish prints. Jackets with a
hint of a military cut were paired with slender black trousers.

Leather also featured prominently, whether in red or black
leather shirts or black leather lines as accents on dresses.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)