I met Ritchie Chan, founder of Triple-Major, at Wok Store during the Milanese edition of his Nomad Store, an ongoing retail experiment bringing emergent young labels to different cities around the world. This sporadic, short-termed, traveling stores, utilizing each city’s local resources and absorbing their characteristics like nomads, have so far left their footprints in Honk Kong, Shanghai, Los Angeles and London. Protagonists of this fifth event, hosted by Wok Store’s founders Federica Zambon and Simona Citarella, was the “Hand Shadow” collection as well as the designs of Crane, Digest Design Workshop, Uuendy Lau and Tianmono Wang. I sat down with Ritchie in his Milanese Nomad Store to get the details on Triple-Major.
Where are you from?
I grew up in Hong Kong and studied in Los Angeles, where I started Triple-Major.
What’s your relationship with Milano?
It’s one of my favorite cities in Europe. It has the energy and interesting things going on like a big city, but still a comfortable and relaxing vibe overall.
When did you open your store? And what was your aim?
We opened Triple-Major in Beijing in 2010 with our vision being “Reinventing Popular Culture”. We bring designers that are rarely presented in the Chinese market, such as Daniel Palillo, BLESS and many others, along with clothes that have stories or concept behind them to Beijing.
How much has managing your project changed you?
Managing Triple-Major pushed me to oversee everything myself, allowing me view things from a wider perspective and vision. I have to be involved in everything, from production, marketing to daily operations, so working on Triple-Major gave me the opportunity to participate in things that I wasn’t familiar before.
Describe your collaboration with Wok. How did you three meet?
We have always heard about each other and appreciated each other’s works. Once during Paris Fashion Week we noticed we were all there so we arranged a meeting to discuss potential collaboration opportunities, which we found out we shared similar vision and understanding with fashion.
Describe in three words The Wok Store.
Dynamic, Fresh, Passionate.
What’s your favorite collection you’re selling this season?
For the Beijing shop, my favorite is the new AW12 collection from Anntian. It has very interesting prints and overall styling.
What’s the best thing that’s going to happen this year?
After the nomad store in Milano we are showing our collection over at Paris Fashion Week, which I am very excited about, as I think the buyers will like our new “Hand Shadow” collection.
Words by Caterina Coccioli
Photos by Tommaso Di Ciommo
