Putting The Tang Into 'Shanghai'

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  Bey with Sir David Tang on 'Shanghai' set

PUTTING THE TANG INTO ‘ prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /SHANGHAI’: Fashion with passion in a Bangkok studio.

Anyone who’s seen my shoes will know that I’m the last person in the world to trust in matters of fashion. One thing I love about this business is you never know when you’re going to be hit with a challenge from left field. On the period epic ‘ Shanghai’, which is set in 1941, we had a fashion show sequence scrīpted. Our much revered boss Harvey Weinstein suggested we collaborate with the Shanghai Tang fashion brand to create the dresses displayed in this sequence.

I knew the company’s founder, Sir David Tang (who in Hong Kong does not?) and Shanghai Tang had sponsored my own wardrobe when I was a host on the late, lamented CNX cable channel. I was also peripherally involved when they produced a series of Shaw Bros themed apparel a few years back. HW called Sir David, and we set up a meeting with brand head Raphael le Masne de Chermont and his team.

Attending the initial meeting was Raphael, marketing head Joyce Hu, designer Sam Roseman, Sir David and myself. I outlined for them our intention for the scene. We wanted to imagine how a Shanghai Tang fashion show would have looked… if the company had already existed in 1941. Sir David’s knowledge of period Shanghai fashions and style are second to none, and he readily agreed to provide his wisdom and experience to the production. (I know that sounds like I’m campaigning for my own knighthood, but he is a genuinely cool and fun guy.)

At this point, I should mention our wonderful and long-suffering costume designer, Julie Weiss. Julie has provided her unique vision to dozens of films, and was Oscar-nominated for her work on ‘12 Monkeys’ and ‘Frida’. It was obviously very important that the ‘Shanghai Tang’ fashion show fit within Julie’s overall designs for the ‘ Shanghai’ costumes. Despite her early trepidations, she very graciously coordinated the inclusion of the classic Shanghai Tang dresses into the overall (ahem) fabric of the piece. (I was also delighted to see how well she and Sir David got along when they met during the actual shoot.)

We scheduled a date and time for the indefatigable Sam Roseman to come to Thailand bearing dresses. As ever, on a production of this size, there were shots being fired in all directions. Could we get duplicate dresses if any of the girls performed stunts? Who was going to provide accessories, gloves, shoes etc? How much access would we need to a set that was still being constructed and lit? Never was the Logan charm needed more (would that I actually had some…)

After working out the logistics, we got down to the most painful job of all. We had the venue and the dresses, now where in Bangkok could we find eight gorgeous women to fill them? Who, apart from myself, was responsible for selecting them? For some reason, there was absolutely no shortage of volunteers whatsoever for this particular arduous assignment. We had to suffer through a parade of Asian beauties (I felt like Jim Kelly after the banquet scene in ‘Enter The Dragon’…) and had to be careful to only choose ladies who looked like they could have been models in 1941 Shanghai. As you’ll see in the finished film, we did come up with a magnificent seven models, plus one lovely yet lethal stuntwoman.

This last requirement came about when our stunt coordinator, the great Vic Armstrong, decided that, when the show is disrupted by an explosion, he wanted at least one girl to go hurtling into one of the pools surrounding the stage. Luckily, our Thai action guru, Seng, had a lady stunt person who looked the part, was game to take the plunge and, wonder of wonders, fit the only dress we had duplicates of, as though it had been made to measure. The only bad news was that she injured her arm performing an earlier stunt (we gave her long gloves) and she had never worn heels in her life (she practiced all night to prepare for the shoot).  

I want to go on record here saying that, based on my limited experience, 90 percent of good production is finding the right people to work with you. I know a lot of big shot producers would like you to believe there’s some further arcane alchemy involved, but I’ve seen very little of that… We were incredibly lucky that Sam Roseman was assigned to the ‘ Shanghai’ project, and that Shanghai Tang allowed us to use far more of his time and talents than originally planned. Initially, Sam was only supposed to choose, deliver and fit the dresses for the fashion show scene. However, on arrival in Bangkok, he had so many great ideas regarding accessories and other design elements; we asked that he stay on-set while the actual scene was shot.