The charmed life of Lucky Luke

First it was rock and now it is vintage apparel. A shop owner revels in a life in which music and fashion are in harmony

'I've done just two big things in my life," Liu Ke says. "I played rock for five or six years and I have run vintage clothes shops for the past 10 years."

Liu Ke, 32, owns two shops in Beijing called Mega Vintage.

"If life's a great big book, I reckon that for me rock is the opening chapter."

Liu says he was immature and knew next to nothing when he was 15 years old, and rock introduced him to the world.

Rock music was a dream he pursued, he says, a foil he wielded to ensure the world did not limit him.

Thus music - and he sees his type of music as youth culture - has had a defining influence on him. It reflects the society and culture of a particular time, he says.

Initially the music of the 1970s was his forte and great passion, but as time passed he began to pay attention to the kinds of clothing that seemed to attach themselves to various music genres.

"Music provides a window on the popular culture of an era, and the clothes that performers wear play an important role in that."

He cites a United States militarytype shirt that John Lennon wore on stage in the 1970s and says the former Beatle thus set a fashion trend.

"Even now, many brands reproduce the kind of gear Lennon wore."

In 2008 Liu the rocker branched out into fashion, opening up his first Mega Vintage outlet in the Gulou area of Beijing.

As someone who had played '70s style rock music he wanted to dress like someone of that time, and that in turn steered him into the field of vintage clothing, he says, and eventually he would be consumed by his passion for fashion.

"Just because I stopped playing rock music does not mean the attitudes I nursed suddenly disappeared. In fact I reckon I was following the same trajectory and was just carrying a different weapon."

Indeed Liu reckons it is music that keeps him connected with vintage clothes. He has also spent a lot of time watching old movies, mostly Western ones, including Hollywood productions.

"I did not fall in love with vintage that easily. There were a million reasons for it and a persistent interest in it."

Vintage clothing is not a business in which you are going to have instant success but needs a great deal of devotion over a long time, he says. You have to research and understand the product, including the craft and story behind it.

"It's not the kind of business just anyone can handle. No way."

Vintage culture in Beijing went through a purple patch between 2011 and 2013, he says, when there were 14 vintage clothing shops in Gulou alone. However, all but four of those businesses have since folded, and Liu thinks he knows why.

He surmises that in the good economic times the number of people who wrongly thought they could make a quick buck rose and the number of people who realized that success can come only after a hard slog fell.

"Gulou is a popular area now, and there are openings in the vintage market in China. However, many people think they can just run a shop for a couple of years then walk away with a bucket of cash. That's the fast-food way of doing business."

The tendency to blindly follow fads could be another reason for business failures, he says.

"For some people, running a vintage clothing business makes them cool and trendy."

Trends constantly change, he says, and many people try this thing and that, and barely stop to think about what is really good for them.

"They spend money and a lot of time trying to keep up with trends, afraid of being left out of the loop."

Liu says most people would not be obsessed with a certain way of dressing as the result of watching a movie. But he reckons one of the aims of movies is to disengage people from reality for an hour or two, and he likes to think that after having watched a film he will have learned something from it.

However, his business leaves him little spare time. One of the shop assistants who works for him, Lin Yuyang, says Liu once worked 30 days without a break then decided he really did need a day or two off, but within 24 hours appeared in one of his shops.

Liu says: "I love to talk with vintage-clothes lovers in my shop, and I love the fact that this leaves an impression on them, and we that we can see eye to eye. It's really so cool."

He also enjoys spending time with the products he has discovered and presenting them to customers.

But ultimately Liu, who calls himself Lucky Luke, counts himself fortunate that though this second chapter of his life is a little different to the first, in one way it is exactly the same: he is able to do something he loves.

(China Daily 09/23/2017 page15)