Tuesday 27 January 2009

This is for the fashionistas

Taiwan is a great place to live. Most people are polite, always willing to help, and are warm to foreign travellers. The food here is amazing and ranges from traditional Taiwanese and Chinese cuisine and international fast food notables all the way to the bizarre and sometimes a disgusting possibility to foreign taste buds like pigs blood, pigs brain, and snake bile shots. Just like the food, fashion in Taipei can be just as broad.

A recent discovery of mine that has become one of my favorite shopping districts in Taipei is the Zhongxiao Dunhua area. Along the side streets is where some of the best stores are for clothing and general fashion. Shops cater those in the market for uniforms and trademarks of culture movements that happened in the last 30 years. This is where you can find the brands and styles associated with any subculture. Your cheap mondays are here as is your insight and stussy. Paul frank can be found next to one of the Taiwanese mimics of American Apparel. Supreme, the hundreds, and hip hop label LRG can be found in shops here too. And those of you obsessed with your damn shoes and aren't sure if you can live without your twenty pairs of dunks or alife can be appeased at a shop or two here as well. Make sure you check out the skate shops too, they have some of the best clothing I have seen at any skate shop even in the states.

Leather Jackets, carhartt and dickies can be found at a place called "Country Store". Where the sound of rockabilly provides a shopping soundtrack while the stores decor and two classic motorcycles outside are relics of an obsolete albeit classic American stereotype.

The Place you want to start your walk about is from Zhongxiao Dunhua MRT exit number two. Take a left at the first street you come to. It will be on the corner of California fitness, which will be on your left after you come out of exit two. Then proceed to walk up and down the streets and buy what thou wishes to obtain and desire.

Overall the area is great for the 20 - 40 crowd or whoever classifies themselves as fitting into some subculture. Zhongxiao Dunhua might be compared to Williamsburg in Brooklyn in an attempt to give familiarity, but the area definitely has a Taiwanese identity with unique boutiques and frequented by Taipei's own underground. Worth checking out if your living in Taiwan, visiting Taiwan for more than two weeks, or just need to find something you want.

soon to be added: notable shops in this area. Ill make an edit soon.

3 comments:

  1. I don't eat pigs brain neither... :p

    ReplyDelete
  2. Leather jacket please. And a pair of dickies. Just kidding!

    ReplyDelete
  3. http://my.hypebeast.com/showthread.php?t=27866

    check it adam!

    ReplyDelete