A Grand Designer with No Grand Design: Andre Kao’s Fashion Career

“In fact, I never ever imagined that I would one day work as a professional in the world of fashion,” says Andre, a Pai­wan Aborigine from Tai­tung County, “I just did what I did, but there was no ‘grand design’ behind it. Everything that has happened has just unfolded.”

Coming from a very poor family, as the eldest son Andre was under an obligation to contribute to the family income. Therefore, during the first semester of his first year in junior high school, he took a leave of absence and headed off to Tai­pei to find a job. He ended up working as a painter for old-fashioned movie billboards. “As a result, the person who I was then had very little book learning, but I had seen a lot of movies.”

However, the business of producing painted movie billboards had long been in decline, and Andre needed some alternatives. In any case, he was already realizing that he had bigger dreams. He decided to get more professional training of a practical nature, but first he had to go through a period of studying hard on his own to acquire an equivalency certification for a junior high school diploma. Then he tested into Fu-Hsin Trade & Arts School, and graduated from its department of drawing and painting with the highest grades in his class. Even more extraordinary is that virtually all of the works he produced while in school were bought up by art collectors.

While still studying at Fu-Hsin, Andre took a job as a window display designer at a department store. “This job gave me simultaneous training in both aesthetics and business, because window display is not just a variation on installation art—it has to have a marketing effect, it has to make consumers want to buy the products they see arranged in the window display.” He says that what he learned during this phase of his life would prove extremely valuable when he later decided to found his own brand.

After completing his compulsory military service, Andre relates, “I began to more seriously consider my future. I was continually asking myself, are there any other possibilities for my life?” He wanted to go back to school and learn more, to build a stronger foundation for himself. Building on what he had studied at Fu-Hsin, he initially aspired to take the exam to enter the Department of Communications Design at Shih Chien. It was only when he arrived at the university to register that he discovered that the Department of Communications Design had no evening classes. For Andre, who needed to work and earn money during the day, this was a real disappointment. However, the person who was handling the registration process suggested to him that he could study clothing design instead, because that department did offer evening classes.

After going back to high school, Andre got his basic training in drawing and painting. He still sketches every one of his fashion creations before proceeding to the cutting and sewing.

In 2009, after receiving a Taiwan Fashion Design Award from the Taiwan Textile Federation, Andre decided to create his own eponymous brand name. When the TTF later established the Fashion Institute of Taipei (FIT) and held its first competition for clothing design, Andre was one of the first cohort of five award winners. “Those of us who became resident designers at FIT got access to all its facilities, equipment, and technical support, including the three sample making centers that TTF set up. We even each got our own workshop.” In addition, TTF set up a collective kiosk in the toney Eslite Bookstore Parklane in Taichung, where the five designers could display and sell their work.

This was the first time that the ANDRE brand actually came face to face with consumers. “I was really anxious, and the night before the kiosk opened I was up all night setting out the display.” The outcome? All his clothing in the Eslite Parklane sold out in one day. People in the fashion business used terms like “overnight hit” and “home run on his first swing” to describe what had happened, but Andre himself says, “It was like taking a tranquilizer. It turned out that after all there really were consumers who liked my clothing, and I reckoned I could put my mind at ease and keep plowing ahead.”

In 2014, building on seven Aboriginal myths and legends (such as the tale of the Ka­va­lan princess, the Bu­nun myth of shooting an arrow into the sun, and the origin story of the Pai­wan people), and giving these stories an artistic and fashion-savvy twist, Andre came up with a series of printed textiles with which to design extremely original clothing. He also put this together with crystal jewelry of the Weng Collection, the brand founded by third-generation Formosa Plastics heir Fanny Tsai. The result won a silver medal for cutting-edge creativity at the Taipei IN Style exhibition.

Andre created abstract geometric forms that interpret stories and legends of Taiwan’s Aboriginal peoples, and printed these on fabrics, from which he has designed attire and accessories. (courtesy of Andre Kao)

Andre’s other design line comes from his distillation of design elements from tradition, which are repackaged using novel modes of artistic expression to produce surrealist or futurist styles. Bold and riveting, these modes added a seemingly unlimited palette of expression to his clothing. This approach also has proved to be strikingly effective on the walkway.

In an effort to get even more exposure to the public eye, Andre boldly took the initiative to make contact with the well-known image shaper Chen Sun Hua via Facebook, and under Chen’s guidance Andre began to take on jobs designing celebrities’ attire for performances and advertisements. He has been the costume designer for live concerts for Show Lo, JJ Lin, Jolin Tsai, Stephanie Sun, Tanya Chua, SHE, Yang Nai­wen, and others.

Doing costume design for celebrities provided a stable income as well as fame. But inside Andre’s head there was still the notion that he wanted to develop his own brand name. “Designing for the stars is really rewarding, and you have a lot of room to bring all your skills into play, which really put my insecure soul at ease. But getting a brand into the market is something else altogether.” Andre remarks that this is not just a matter of individual design, but requires putting a lot of time and energy into commerce and marketing.

Andre took a look around at the operational models adopted by designers in Taiwan who already had their own brands. He discovered that the great majority of designer brands followed a strategy of low-volume sales of finished products though boutiques. But he didn’t want to go the route of having to worry about making clothing lines that might or might not sell, while still having to cover the costs of making the outfits and storing them. The method he adopted was to have only very small-scale production of samples, which he then took, at his own expense, to international fashion exhibitions and shows, planning to mass-produce the designs only after receiving orders.

This is an alternative work that Andre made out of acrylic. Called “Ice Beauty,” it was inspired by the melting of the icebergs as a result of global warming. It shows that his creativity and design skills cover a whole range of materials and media. (courtesy of Andre Kao)

So Andre threw himself heart and soul into major international exhibitions. All around the world—Paris, New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai—at fashion weeks and trade shows of the latest trends, Andre would be there. Through these exhibitions he received orders from a number of countries in Europe and the Middle East. There was even one enormous order from a Turkish buyer for 30,000 pieces, but Andre worried that rushing to complete such a huge order by the tight deadline requested would affect the quality of the goods, and, very regretfully, had to decline. Nonetheless, it gave him confidence that he had the potential to develop the international market. Recently Andre has traveled often to mainland China looking for business opportunities. As soon as he is able to find an exclusive agent for his brand, he will be able to formally enter the mainland market.

Andre points out that when it comes to fashion, design and trends, people in Taiwan are always emphasizing that they want to pursue “internationalization.” It seems like their aspirations are always directed outward. “But I often think, why can’t we become someone else’s ‘international’? Why can’t it be that they want to learn from us?” It’s an audacious thought. Andre says that it is perhaps because he is an indigenous person, one of those people who has grown up and lived on the margins of society, that he has benefitted from the counterintuitive “advantage” of not being much affected by mainstream values, so he is never afraid to follow an alternative path.

Whether he succeeds or not, there is no doubt that his indigenous heritage will remain at the heart of his creative work. “Taiwan’s indigenous peoples have extraordinarily rich and colorful traditional elements, which is the core competitive feature for the development of my own brand.”

Andre says that his philosophy of life has always been, “Don’t miss any opportunity; if there is no opportunity, then make an opportunity.” This being the case, it is easier to understand how a mere 13-year-old from a small Aboriginal community who had not even completed a single semester of middle school could come to Taipei and from there stride across the globe, constructing a fashion stage of his very own. Andre says: “I want to give it everything I have; I want to come back from the world as a sensation.”