A model act
Mixing with the rich and infamous fashionista Eliza Wang (top) has rubbed shoulders with Richard Nixon and Elizabeth Taylor. |
"I will create the best learning environment for my students," said Wang, now in her 60s, at her newly decorated office at the Creative Industry Center in Shanghai's Hongkou District.
"I don't charge tuition fees. I just hope many of them will become super models and my company will get to be their agent," she said.
Wang's rented 475-square-meter space houses a studio, rehearsal room and make-up room.
On the walls of the corridors linking up these rooms hang covers of international fashion magazines, some with pictures of Wang herself and some with those of her students who went on to become world-famous models .
"Shanghai has a mature fashion market," said Wang explaining her return to this city. "It is also the center of the textile industry in China."
Wang was born into a doctor's family in Taipei and is the oldest of six children. Of all the girls in the family, she is the tallest.
"At that time, my height made my mother very worried, because she thought no one would marry such a tall girl," recalled Wang, with a chuckle.
Wang's uncle, who was studying in London, thought her slender frame would make her a good model, although at that time Wang herself had no idea what it meant to be one.
Her uncle kept mailing her fashion magazines, finally kindling a desire in the then 13-year-old to take up modelling.
While studying for her Philosophy degree in Xinya College, (which later became part of the Chinese University of Hong Kong), she joined the college's teams of models and took part in several charity shows.
Wang's parents, however, did not want her to follow this career path.
One day, Wang received a telegram from her mother urging her to return home as her father was critically ill.
She rushed to the hospital to find her father with an oxygen mask. Before she had the chance to greet her family, he asked her to read the definition of "model" in a very thick dictionary her mother had taken to the hospital.
Wang recalled reading aloud, "Model is one serving as an example to be imitated or compared." She said she took her father's lesson to heart that to be an outstanding model, one should have not only physical beauty but also a noble mind and strive for excellence in all aspects of one's life.
Wang worked very hard, and within two years, became the most well-known model in Taiwan.
"But my ambition was to become an internationally-renowned model," she said.
After marriage, Wang moved with her husband to New York in 1971, but kept up with her modelling.
Supported by her husband, she decided to participate the One Million Dollar Model Competition and walked away with the top prize.
The competition was designed to reward those models who helped fashion designers sell the most. If the model could help sell couture worth more than $1 million to customers in a year she could enter the competition.
Only models who had walked on the T-stage in the United States could win the competition, making the award a widely-recognized one in the US fashion market.
Wang vividly remembers every detail of her win in 1972.
She was invited to a show of fur coats by top designers. As the first Asian model in the circle and a beginner, the organizer gave her a coat from "Chichila", a renowned brand that catered to older women.
Wang said, "The designer told me the coat was of top quality but very heavy. In order to make it attractive to senior women customers, the designer asked me to make it look like the coat was as light as a feather and could even fly."
Wang bought a pair of shoes to match the coat and practised walking and twirling in front of a mirror for days.
"At one point, the coat did fly when I turned around. I repeated the movement and then practised it to perfection."
Her efforts did not go in vain. An elderly customer finally bought the fur coat for $1 million. The event brought Wang great acclaim in the fashion industry. In that year Wang helped fashion designers sell the most and won the competition.
Wang did not rest on her laurels and soon found herself as the model chosen to test out the fashions for former US first lady Pat Nixon for the Nixons' first visit to China. "The year 1972 was one of my luckiest years," she said.
After her daughter Deborah was born, Wang quit modelling and moved back to Taipei.
She started her own fashion design company, Eliza Couture, and also began to work on her namesake magazine.
Many Hollywood stars came to Wang. In 1979 when Elizabeth Taylor came to Taipei, Wang designed costumes that won fulsome praise from the actress for their flattering styles.
In 1985, Wang was invited to train the first team of models in Beijing.
On the plane, Wang was not impressed with the Air China air hostesses and worried that the models may not be up to par.
"But at my first meeting with the candidates, I was stunned by their natural beauty and politeness," Wang said.
"I shared with them the meaning of the word model as explained to me by my father and told them their goal should be to become a model human being and not to look at latching on to rich men."
(China Daily 03/02/2007 page19)
