40. A new home. By Ian Hylton

40. A new home. By Ian Hylton

Story written by James Lin based on the interview notes by Jevon C. Hercules and Luz M. Sanchis and approved by Mr. Hylton

All photos in this article are courtesy of Mr. Ian Hylton

My biggest influence as far as style is concerned was undoubtedly my mother. She not only had impeccable style and taste, but taught me to appreciate art, dance, design, both fashion and interior design, and culture of all types. International culture. She also supported my love of all of the above. There was also another influence, my aunt Selina in New York. When I was a child, I would visit her during the summers on Long Island. She was a captivating woman. It didn’t even need to be any special occasion; or rather, every night was a special occasion, with the way she dressed and carried herself. I was inspired by them, and fashion has since become my life’s work.

In the 2000s, I moved to New York and worked as editor-at-large for a magazine called Suede. After the project ended, an old friend of mine Tu Ly informed me that the brand Ports 1961 had recently been acquired by a Chinese-Canadian company. I actually have a long relationship with Ports. My first contact with Ports started with my friendship with Miki Tanabe, one of the founder’s daughters, and continued with a lineage of dear friends, who would go on to design the collection. And my personal relationship with the brand started with my dear friends Fiona and Tia Cibani.

 

Tu told me that Ports was looking for a creative director for menswear to relocate to Xiamen. I had never been to Asia before, but my mother had always emphasized to me the importance of going abroad; after all, that was how she met my father. My mother was originally from Guyana, and my father Jamaica. They met while at school in England; I was born in Liverpool. They decided to relocate our family to Canada on a whim, and so I grew up in Toronto. When my mother heard I might be going to China, she gave her wholehearted support. “If you don’t go for me, go for you.” She said that China was the future, just as she believed Canada was the future back then.

So I jumped at the opportunity. I packed a suitcase full of white clothes and a Panama hat, ready for tropical weather. Xiamen was the Miami of China, or so I had heard. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I arrived in Xiamen on December 1, 2005, and I was greeted by a damp cold! Luckily, though, that was just an unusually cold winter. Xiamen is almost always warm and full of light, and it has an amazing energy.

I quickly fell in love with the city. I had just come from New York, the city that never sleeps, where there are neon advertisements as far as the eye can see, car horns constantly blaring, crowds crisscrossing. Xiamen was different. I didn’t understand the language, which made it feel almost as if I was walking in virtual silence. And the vibe of the city is leisurely and calm; you work hard but you rest well.

Another thing that amazes me about China is the speed of development. When I first arrived in Xiamen, Binbei was 60% or 70% bicycles, with very few cars, and there were no lines on the road. Driving there was what I can only describe as a joyful madness. Jimei district was just a suburb, with almost nothing there. But the pace of growth in China is staggering. Once, I left briefly to go to Europe for three weeks. When I came back, I called a cab, and I soon noticed that the cab driver was going the wrong way. Except, he wasn’t going the wrong way; in the space of three weeks, a totally new bridge had been constructed, with over 1000 workers working day and night.

As much as I loved Xiamen, I hadn’t initially planned on staying permanently. I thought I would come and experience China for a year or two, and then go back to New York or Europe. The company and I had the shared ambition to bring the menswear brand back to the West. The womenswear brand had successfully launched in New York years earlier. So in 2009, we opened a showroom in Milan, and I split my time between Milan and Xiamen. We started showing on the Milan runways. Serendipitously, that year, I met Min, the woman who would become my wife. Min is a designer who trained in London and was living in Amsterdam at the time. She had come back to China only temporarily because of an illness in the family, but then she decided she might stay for a year. That was when we met, and it was a very fast romance. We got married the next year.

In true West Indian fashion, I invited all of my friends and family to the wedding. I didn’t think they would all come, though, so we didn’t plan on having a big wedding. But to my surprise, all 150 of my invitees RSVPed yes! They were coming from all over the world, from England, Canada, Jamaica, to celebrate with us. Fiona and Alfred, the owners of Ports, very generously offered to host the wedding at their villa on Gulangyu, where we had a beautiful and emotional wedding.

What made China even more special was being able to share it with my family. In the early years, my mother and father used to come to China regularly to visit me. And my son Bailey from my first marriage also came to China many times. When he was 12 and living in Vancouver, his school was on strike, and after going through three supply teachers within two months, I was fed up with the situation. I decided, literally overnight, to bring him to China. That was his first time in Xiamen; he went to Xiamen International School for a year, and went back and forth between Xiamen and Canada for the next few years. He spent holidays and Christmases in China, too. He grew to love Chinese culture and the Chinese language, so much so that after he graduated high school, he came back for his gap year to learn the language.

Splitting my time between China and Milan became challenging, because Min and I were newly married, and I had to spend half my time in Milan. In 2013, I started making plans for how we could be together more full time. Min had founded a brand in 2010 called Ms MIN, which was growing, and needed my expertise. So in 2014, I decided to leave what I was doing and work with my wife full time. I came to China to work and stayed for Love. Now, I am permanently in Xiamen.

Of course, there are still things I miss. When my father was here, he taught our cook how to make curry the way our family makes it. It’s funny, though. I may have grown up in Toronto, but I feel like my roots have shifted. I actually feel more comfortable now in Xiamen than I do in Toronto, and I’ve started a family and a life here. I am home here in Xiamen.

I love travel and culture. It is my life, my destiny. China is a magnificent nation. I only hope to share more of its beauty, incredible history, and culture with the world.

 

 

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