Nov 22, 2013
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KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with the delightfully husky-voiced Angelica Cheung, editor-in-chief of Vogue China and, before that, editorial director of the Chinese edition of Elle and the editor-in-chief of Marie Claire Hong Kong where she also co-published several other fashion magazines.
Cheung says that in the early days of fashion shoots for Vogue China, Westerners thought only of “'cheongsams, opium beds and 'In the Mood for Love'”, but she had to let them know that was very patronising. She is not interested, she says, in being told what Chinese women should or should not do or wear. Through her work, she is trying she says to create an energy among her readers and while she is not what she terms a 'fashion feminist', she does cares about how her Chinese readers feel about their lives and being happy because “life is short”.
Born in 1966 Cheung recently took part in the International New York Times S.E.A. Of Luxury conference, @INYTLuxury, hosted by Suzy Menkes, designed the organizers say to “bring South East Asia out of the shadows with an agenda that looked at Asia both as as a luxury goods supplier, as well as a powerful consumer base”.
The daughter of a Chinese diplomat, Cheung graduated from Peking University in 1990 where she obtained degrees in law and English language and literature. She subsequently received an MBA degree from University of South Australia and then in 1993 took a position as a writer at 'Eastern Express', an English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, She covered all aspects of life there in the run-up to the handover to China in 1997 and then, in 2001, was named editor-in-chief of Marie Claire Hong Kong and, in 2003,editorial director at Elle China in Shanghai. When publisher Conde Nast wanted to launch Vogue in China, the company asked Cheung to take the lead and since 2005 she has been editorial director.