Gia Kuan: How An Outsider Became Fashion's Next Tour De Force
In PR maven Gia Kuan's world, art and fashion are a marriage, and she brings her NYC shenanigans to Telfar, emerging designers, and other clients worldwide.
If you look a bit beyond the seams of the fashion’s glitzy and high-profile shows, you will find a seemingly unbothered publicist, a phone-addicted individual who is actually juggling about 20 no-shows and questioning why their event's photographer is somewhere in SoHo instead of their Brooklyn location. Their job? Making brands known via coveted editorial features, booking unconventional yet revolutionary show locations (with superior A-list attendees list,) or even generating enough social media buzz to foster a 20,000-person waiting list for Heaven’s surprise Deftones concert. All of which 36-year-old Gia Kuan is known for at her eponymous PR firm, Gia Kuan Consulting, which develops “[…] impressions with a wider definition than conventional communications” within the worlds of fashion, lifestyle, and contemporary art — we’ll get to that part later.
Most times, PR folk get labeled as an adjacent of cut-throat People’s Revolution founder Kelly Cutrone, also known on MTV series The Hills as Lauren’s boss or, better yet, her brief namesake show Kell On Earth. But with Jessel Taank, the perfectly kooky addition to The Real Housewives of New York City reboot and genius behind many fashion/beauty brands, including Stella McCartney, Victoria Beckham, and Kylie Cosmetics, the PR stereotype reached a more lighthearted mainstream appeal.
However, Kuan falls in neither category. In September 2020, Vogue underlined her and two other fashion PR professionals as the “Present and Future of Fashion PR” with a specific niche in fostering “a relatable, community-based vibe at their fashion shows” where quality trumps quantity— a concept unfamiliar to the industry at large. In a Vanity Fair profile, fashion leaders, including Heaven designer Ava Niru and Lu’u Dan founder Hung La, describe Kuan as “that friend that feels like family,” with CFDA/Vogue 2023 designer Kim Shui adding, “She doesn’t speak negatively of other people. That’s very, very important.”
Kuan is an atypical and vital variable in the success rate for many emerging New York City designers, including PRISCAVera and PUPPETS AND PUPPETS. In a TikTok video from Vogue, famed editor Lynn Yaeger was asked the best advice she ever got, to which she happily answered, “Oh, it’s Sally Singer’s advice. Her advice is: If you’re interested in fashion, learn about everything except for fashion.” Well, Kuan’s Fashionista interview inadvertently hit that nail on the head, where she revealed her original pursuit of a law degree from the University of Melbourne.
Throughout the interview, the mogul unravels her many college jobs— including being a bottle girl— where Kuan eventually landed at a luxury fashion store in Melbourne called Assin. The experience slowly awakened her love for fashion and self-expression, which was strictly limited to school uniforms beforehand, leading her to New York City’s notorious Parsons in 2010 for a different career path.
The Taiwanese-Australian understood the fashion industry’s rigid operations through Parsons’ intense internship requirements ( a “crash course” in fashion, if you will,) where Kuan not only learned city locations while running errands for PR Consulting— eventually bleeding into another internship at Tom Ford, and so on— she became aware of various company cultures, and the importance of industry relationships.
Although her experience at Dover Street and six-year occupancy at Comme des Garçons strengthened her traditional PR fundamentals and industry relations, Kuan felt it was time to expand. Many have their brief hiatus from fashion, but few keep their interests intact as Kuan, who handled Nadine Portman’s arts and culture accounts, harvesting a fresh perspective to personable PR relationships, event planning, and “thoughtful” seating charts.
“I've always been a curious person,” she told Fashionista about her non-linear career. “Growing up, I didn't consume fashion the way a lot of other people did, and if I did, I wanted to know the 'why' behind it. The product itself isn't enough.”
A continuously unsatisfied curiosity is probably every creative’s greatest strength. And Kuan’s desire to give designers a platform, whether via press or word-of-mouth, is not a “selfish self-fulfillment thing." It’s exactly who you want on your team. She began freelancing for friends, utilizing her resources to amplify up-and-coming industry players— and many consider her a friendly face rather than the woman who repeatedly iconized Luar, notably breaking The Shed’s capacity for their 2022 NYFW show.
So, what does Gia Kuan do best? Telling Gallery Gurls, Kuan’s affinity for Telfar and Luar’s nuanced statements on gender and diversity seem to reaffirm her own “marriage” of art and fashion in her life and work. If the dots aren’t connecting, I will try a designer analogy: Kuan has built an undeniable patent, which she amplifies ten-fold by using a brand’s guiding principles as beautiful patchwork, thus creating a one-of-a-kind product and experience. Probably the most underrated experience being Telfar’s SS19 collection preview at the Serpentine Galleries in London during their Park Nights series (curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist.)
In recent years, the popularization of Telfar extends beyond its popular everyday unisex bags. Both Telfar and Luar awoke an “emerging wave of talent who are under-recognized,” which led Kuan on an international adventure to Shanghai Fashion Week, South Korea, and even helping Swedish Fashion Council for Fashion X and its incubator program of designers like HODAKOVA, Petra Anastasia Fagerstrom, UNIFORM, and other talents.
Her goal? “I'm also interested in the array of talented Asian designers and artists out in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and beyond,” she tells Gallery Gurl. “I’d love to bring them more exposure to the U.S. and international markets, help them grow, and nurture them with resources.”
When not stressed over making the impossible iconic, including Telfar’s show-stopping SS19 collection atop a Manhattan helicopter pad, Kuan breaks into new spaces with Japanese female wrestling league Sukeban, puts anime into her nighttime routine (currently enjoying Netflix’s “Komi Can’t Communicate”), and sees every occasion to wear everything, with a red abstract and quirky Bad Binch TONGTONG design for her engagement photos with now-husband Anatoly Kirichenko the cherry on top of an endless supply of extravagant fashion choices.
Want to keep up with Gia Kuan’s adventures and stunning nail art? Follow her on Instagram, where work-life balance includes a healthy dose of pink must-haves. If you need another incentive, her dog Truffle and cat Gnocchi make the odd appearances that melt your heart. Trust me, it’s worth it!
Now that I’ve played the role of The People Person, being everyone's personal sleuth, it’s time for me to call it quits here. Please follow me on social media at your own risk (i.e., an unbelievable amount of Instagram Story drivel.) Although I preview my written work on Instagram, you can read my published work in their entirety here, too.
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