Renaissance man

What was the first time you worked with a fashion brand?

In the MSN era. Some brands found me and gave me their products to try. Then, if I found them to be good, I'd recommend them. The commercial sense was very much lacking at that time, though; the brands didn't really know how to do these types of collaborations. But I did realise that I was given some sort of attention.

The first brand I collaborated with was a cosmetics line, I think under L'Oréal. At that time I was also writing a beauty column for a magazine, so I took the article from the column over to my blog and added a new facial cream. But it was cheaper than the rest of the products, so I remember there were a few followers who suspected me – nothing serious, people were just curious.

As far as the first larger-scale collaboration, that was in my Weibo era. I was invited by Gucci to their show in Italy, and I wrote some pieces and tweets on the way. We didn't know anything about increasing fans or boosting sales at that time; fashion blogging in the West was already quite mature then, but not in China. So I was selected as a representative of fashion bloggers coming from China.