Tailored for tots

Encouraged by her friends, she found an empty space near the Drum and Bell Towers in Beijing to open Tang' Roulou's first shop.

In 2007 Peraud met Babin, who had been in China for three-and-a half years and had done a variety of jobs. The two became friends and developed a business partnership.

Their first job as partners was to design a logo for the brand. Tanghulu, a traditional Chinese snack, which consists of candied Chinese hawthorns on a bamboo skewer, reminded them of pommes d'amour, French for "apples of love", candy covered apples eaten at Halloween and known as toffee apples or candy apples in other countries.

"When I see tanghulu, I see a lot of small apples of love put together," Peraud says, "which connects Chinese culture with French culture. It's so nice. But we change the spelling of tanghulu based on French pronunciation into Tang' Roulou."

Chinese and French culture run through their work. Babin takes out a red Chinese tunic called Yangguifei, a name coming from one of the Four Beauties of ancient China, Yang Guifei, who is the concubine of an emperor in the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907).

She explains that this is the most traditional item among their work, but that normally their designs incorporate both strong Chinese and French elements, giving them a look that is both modern and traditional.

Neither Babin nor Peraud is a trained designer. Peraud grew up in the suburbs of Paris and studied publishing and advertising at university.

Babin is from the west of France and had no involvement in design until 2003 when he worked for a gallery showing Chinese art.

"It's like living in China: You see details that you love and later, you think about those details and want to express them in your own ways. Maybe this is what we do with Tang' Roulou."

Two years after Babin joined, they moved to new premises in the trendy Sanlitun area of Beijing in 2010.

"For Europeans, it is very exotic but also very delicate. So when we add Chinese elements to our designs, foreigners often like it since they cannot find similar products in other stores."

Chinese customers are surprised to find two French people selling such Chinese designs.

"Often, they say it's strange that foreign designers employ so many Chinese elements in their work but Chinese designers do not. And some others say their mother and grandmother used to do this and they are very nice," she says.

Rather than plastic or metal buttons, they use traditional Chinese patterned cloth ones, called hulu buttons, which give their designs a delicate and elegant feel. They also invent unusual ways to use traditional materials.

One product is a notebook with sewn covers embroidered with an abstract tiger in a Chinese style and the Chinese character fu, which means luck. The notebook's bookmark is made from a cloth button.

"You see there is a fu and a hulu button that also means luck (because the pronunciation is similar to that of fu)," Peraud says.

The French style of Peraud and Babin comes out particularly strongly in their use of color and patterns, she says.

French humor is also a part of the names of some designs. For example, they have a velvet tunic called Pilipala, which is supposed to represent the sound of crackers or raindrops on a roof.

A traditional qipao dress is named Shanghai because Peraud says the shape and style remind her of Shanghai singers in the 1930s.

Now, besides their Beijing stores, they also have a dealer selling their designs in Shanghai and an online shop.

"The business is growing, but slowly, and I hope we can expand production in the future," Babin says.

Peraud says her dream is to keep the business going and spend more time in the countryside looking for inspiration in China's craft works.

Contact the writer at yangyangs@chinadaily.com.cn.

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