One might think that fashion is all about trends, and what is fashionable this season will be no more in just a few months. However, for Macau designer, rock singer, musician, DJ and visual artist Vincent Cheang Chi Tat, the true essence of fashion is in its timeless nature.
Founder of design company XL Creations, local rock band L.A.V.Y., the LMA (Live Music Association) and fashion brand WORKER PLAYGROUND, the multi-talented designer Vincent Cheang recently celebrated his 52nd birthday in January.
“My creative journey started quite early, and it is still going on! Every time I reach a new decade in my life, I always have new ideas for projects to work on,” Vincent tells CLOSER excitedly, as he reflects on his creative career throughout the decades to more recent projects.
It all started when he was just 11 years old.
“In 1981, the television set in my home stopped working, and my father said he would not buy a new one. I asked him what we should do then, and he suggested that I listen to the radio. Initially I thought it was a very boring idea. But then as I started listening to the radio and it opened me up to a whole new world! There was just so much music on air! I have been deeply attracted to the music world ever since,” Vincent recalls, describing how he viewed the music world as a world of legends.
He recalls that in 1983 he heard on the radio that Karen Carpenter had died of anorexia.
“I was only 13 years old and I learnt about anorexia and eating disorders. On the radio I could listen to all sorts of stories about the legends of the music world, and in those days there were no newspapers or magazines in Macau from which I could learn all these things. Most of the time, when I listened to their music, I could only imagine in my mind what these stars actually looked like!” he laughs.
Later, in his last year of high school, Vincent’s family encouraged him to find a job as a policeman instead of continuing his higher education at university. But Vincent would have no part of it and decided to join the music world instead. He was hired as a DJ at TDM Radio when he was just 18 years old and worked his way up in the profession in eight years to become one of the most famous disk jockeys in Macau. Cheang Chi Tat’s name was on radio programmes every other day and he became a music reference for local music lovers.
“The radio library was amazing! All those LPs and CDs were there for me to dig in to. I used to spend hours and hours there just listening to all different kinds of music and preparing my programme lists.”
At the same time, when Vincent was learning all about the music world as a boy, he was also attracted by the stunning images of the rock stars and started to make sketches of these personalities from an early age.
“One day I was drawing a portrait of Anita Mui at home when a friend of my father’s came to visit. He saw my drawing and told my father that I had some talent, but I would need to learn some basic sketching techniques. So I started to learn drawing from him.”
Vincent says that the lessons he took were very useful.
“The skills are fundamental. Without them I could not have depicted the imaginary world that I had been building in my mind.”
At the age of 26, Vincent enrolled in the Visual Art School of the Polytechnic Institute of Macau majoring in Graphic Design. Graduating in 1999, he entered his third decade of life and left his full-time DJ job to only work on weekends at the radio. In 2005 he founded his design company XL Creation and thus began his decade working as a professional designer.
“I was doing mostly commercial work in the design industry and I soon realised that it was not enough. So in 2007 I founded my band L.A.V.Y. who I am still performing with. And then in 2008 I also founded LMA, which hosts music concerts regularly and is still operating today. You can say that I am a very loyal guy in everything that I have started,” he laughs.
Indeed, throughout the decades, his unfaltering love for the music world appears to be the cornerstone of all the creative activities that he has initiated.
In 2011, now in his 40s, Vincent founded his own fashion brand, WORKER PLAYGROUND. The name comes from Macau’s famous Worker’s Field which used to be located next to the Hotel Lisboa.
“I wanted to honour the workers. I am passionate about car and motorcycle mechanics, and I love rock music and their style. So I combined these together and created WORKER PLAYGROUND. I mainly make leather jackets and baseball jackets and some other leather items. It’s been 10 years now and I am still doing it.”
Vincent explains that his focus on particular fashion items is for very important reasons.
“You need time to explore the specificities and nature of leather and the styling before you can name yourself a brand. My aim is not to create something that is featured everywhere in town as the hottest fashion of the season, but to create something that can stand the test of time.”
WORKER PLAYGROUND now has a shop in Beijing at a car racing center and a group of faithful clients who are also car and motorcycle enthusiasts.
“I have been working with the same leather studio in Qingdao over these 10 years. I don’t change my provider because I don’t want to throw away what we have developed together in the past decade. They are experts in the field and I certainly have no reason to stop working with them.”
Indeed, after all, leather appears to look better and better with age.
“You need to take care of your jacket by wearing it for example. If you only keep it on a hanger in a closet, then the leather jacket will have the shape of the hanger instead of your shoulders. The style comes from these kinds of subtleties,” Vincent shares.
Evolving around his passion for fashion, Vincent’s creativity continues to bring him further on his own branding journey.
“Last year I turned 51 and I created a new brand named Cheap Whisky.”
Vincent says that the brand logo is an image of himself drunk and collapsed on the floor.
“As my friends know, I get drunk every now and then and when I am drunk, I just sit and sleep wherever I am. Once a friend of mine took a picture of me in such a state and started to post it on social media and many of my friends were liking it and sharing it. It was a joke and I thought, well, if they like me as a joke then I should make it my own!”
Cheap Whisky is a developing fashion project in which Vincent has designed items such as T-shirts, key-holders and cushions, with many more items coming. At the beginning of his fifth decade, Cheang Chi Tat is finally putting himself on his brand and this one embodies his everlasting playful spirit to a new height of intensity.
“The way this creative pattern repeats itself is almost like a nuisance, so annoying that it has to be funny. I keep playing with it and create whatever I find amusing.”
In the era of “No Tomorrow”, consumerism is anchored in the instant gratification of fun and more often than not, non-sensical behaviour. Having an image of Chi Tat drunk from cheap whisky and collapsed on the floor as our key-holder is perhaps the best response the ever-young designer has to offer society with his utmost sarcastic sense of humour.
When asked about his next project, Vincent also talks about his long-term passion, drawing.
“Now we are talking about NFTs and digital art. Actually I have been doing digital art drawing since 2015 and I had a solo exhibition at Creative Macau in 2018.”
In February the artist launched a solo exhibition in the Macau Art For All Society (AFA) at Macau Art Garden. The series of digital drawing works is entitled Parallel Universe, created exclusively on Pro Create and finely printed on canvasses of 1m x 1m and 1m x 0.7m.
“During the pandemic, I have been working extensively on my drawing because it has been a time that I could really focus without much other work on the side. My last drawing exhibition was mainly focused on personalities in the music world. And this time, since we are all stuck in Macau, I started to imagine a parallel world of the city in my mind.”
Vincent further explains that the technical aspects of these digital drawings are not so different from traditional media.
“I have spent a long time exploring the particularities of the iPad pen and app in order to reach the same level of meticulousness as if I am working with traditional pencils.”
And the results are filled with refined textures.
“In the exhibition, I want to add light as a present element as well. Because the base of these drawings is practically light. I have depicted a Macau in which these lights exist in a surreal way. It is a world that emerges from my mind.”
Deeply rooted in realism, Vincent’s art is not confined to the limitations of reality however. It is rather a parallel reality so vivid that it invites viewers to appreciate what could have been if only we look deeper and certainly, long enough for the essence of creativity to surface so naturally, yet with unparalleled vitality.
“Parallel Universe”
Works by Cheang Chi Tat
22/02/2022 – 3/3
Macau Art For All Society (AFA)
11:00 – 19:00 from Mondays to Saturdays
(Closed on Sundays and Public Holidays)
1st Floor, Art Garden, Avenida Dr. Rodrigo Rodrigues N. 265, Macau
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