A New Love For the Local.(embracing traditional design in China)

Traditional Chinese design has long been more popular abroad than in China. Shoppers from Vancouver to Vienna snatch up red lacquer furniture, silk floral fabrics and cloisonne jewelry. But middle-class Chinese--who still equate "chic" with "Western"--prefer to live in real-estate developments called "Bel-Air" or "Long Beach," carry knock- off Gucci purses and fill their homes with the latest offerings from Ikea. "When you are always around Chinese things, you see things differently," says Louise Kou, a lifestyle consultant with clients on the mainland and in Hong Kong. "In China they want something modern, Western--anything but Chinese."

That's changing fast. Encouraged by the preponderance of mandarin collars on Italian dresses and Chinese antiques in fashionable New York interiors, more and more urban Chinese are embracing locally inspired styles once shunned as tacky and old-fashioned. Their newfound popularity is a sign of how rapid China's modernization has been: the young, in particular--who are accustomed to Western goods and who never had to live through the years of choosing between different shades of drab green Mao suits--are the most avid consumers of homegrown products. Now a growing number of design houses in Hong Kong and the big cities on the mainland are capitalizing on that interest and challenging some Chinese design stereotypes.

Several have found a niche blending traditional style with affordable modern practicality. Singaporean designer Choon Guo sells Chinese- inspired house wares in his rapidly expanding chain of Simply Life stores, including a $30 contemporary pottery vase shaped like a qipao, or Chinese woman's dress. In his main outlet in Xintiandi, the sprawling mall built around converted traditional Shanghainese houses, the vase has proved a best seller among the throngs of local shoppers. "Older Chinese don't like our things," says Guo. "To them, it is a bastardization of the pure forms. We cater to the new generation: the young, affluent customers who have had everything done for them." [sup.2]

Douglas Young, founder of the happening Hong Kong lifestyle brand G.O.D. (which in Cantonese sounds like "to live well"), cleverly draws upon nostalgia for the pre-glass-and-chrome Hong Kong. He makes bags in a print called Yaumatei, after the Hong Kong district crowded ...