If you ever find yourself with an afternoon free in Taipei and no interest in another department store, walk Chifeng Street. It is one lane and a handful of numbered alleys off it, in Zhongshan, and it is the clearest single illustration of how clothing retail works in that city.
Where it is
Zhongshan sits north of Taipei Main Station. Between Zhongshan and Shuanglian metro stations the tracks run underground, and the strip of ground above them has been turned into a long thin park - trees, benches, people sitting out at dusk. Chifeng Street runs off it.
You do not need directions beyond that. Come up out of Zhongshan station, find the park, walk north, and turn into any of the small lanes on your left. The whole area is walkable in an hour and rewards being walked twice.
What it used to be
Chifeng Street was an ironworks and hardware street: metal fabricators, car parts, machine shops, roller doors open onto the pavement, sparks and noise. A few of those workshops are still there, wedged between the newer places, which is what saves the street from feeling curated.
The buildings are narrow, three or four floors, with the shallow ground-floor units that light industry left behind. Those units are exactly the wrong size for a chain and exactly the right size for one person with a point of view, which is why the neighbourhood filled with small shops rather than big ones.
What the shops feel like
Small. Often one room, sometimes one room up a staircase with a hand-painted sign at the bottom. Two or three rails, a table of folded knitwear, a chair. The clothing is chosen rather than merchandised - a shop of that size cannot carry a range, so it carries a taste.
Nobody follows you round. You will usually be greeted once, then left entirely alone to look, and that is the local manner rather than indifference. Ask a question and you will get a straight and often quite technical answer about the fabric.
Second-hand and vintage sit right alongside new labels here, sometimes in the same shop. Coffee is on the ground floor of half the buildings, and the coffee is good, because in Taipei it always is.
The practical shape of a day
Go in the afternoon. Many small Taipei shops open around noon or one, and stay open until nine or ten. Turning up at ten in the morning gets you closed shutters and a wasted walk. Mondays are the common closing day for the independents.
Weekdays are better than weekends, which is when the lanes fill up and the shops become difficult to look at properly.
Take cash as well as a card. Most places take mobile payment; the smallest ones still prefer notes.
Sizes run smaller, and shops here are used to being asked for a measurement. Alterations in Taipei are quick and unfussy, so a sleeve that is slightly long is not the problem it would be at home.
The weather, which decides the day
Summer is humid and hot, with thunderstorms arriving in the afternoon and stopping within the hour. This is not a reason to stay in: Taipei’s older streets have arcades, covered walkways cut through the ground floor of the buildings, and you can shop most of a lane without being properly rained on. Carry the umbrella anyway, everybody does.
Late spring brings weeks of continuous grey rain. Winter is around fifteen degrees and damp, which sounds mild from a British reading of the number and feels colder than it sounds, because almost nothing is heated indoors. A light shell over a knit is the correct answer in every season except high summer, when the answer is one layer and a plan involving air conditioning.
Where to go next
Walk west from Zhongshan and you reach Dihua Street, the old dry goods road, with a fabric market at the end of it - several floors of rolls, trims and tailors, and the most interesting hour in Taipei for anyone who cares how clothing is made.
We are not going to hand you a list of shop names. The good ones change, the great ones move upstairs, and a lane you find yourself is worth ten from a list. Chifeng Street is small enough that you cannot really get it wrong.
