And incidentally hers came first

(And, incidentally, hers came first.)
Thanks to Prada and fashion’s new obsession with the East, Audrey Ang’s phone has not stopped ringing with orders for her new collection. She has even added a few items of clothing – simple T-shirts and skirts made from sumptuous Chinese brocade – although they are selling out faster than she can make them. At Shop in Soho’s Brewer Street, the first delivery from her spring collection sold out in two weeks. “I’d rather keep the styles of the clothes quite basic, so I can concentrate on making the bags perfect,” she says. But it’s her choice of fabrics that really makes her designs a hit. Some of them are old silks from the Seventies, and others are commissioned specially from China.

She uses silk rather than rayon and everything is made in a studio near her home in Notting Hill Gate.Ang was born and bred in London, but her family is from Malaysia. “I don’t really know anything about my Chinese roots,” she says “That’s why I’m so attracted to chinoiserie It’s odd. Now everyone knows me as Chinese Audrey who makes Chinese things, but I can’t even speak Chinese and have never been to China.” Nevertheless, Audrey’s precious pieces of the Far East are in great demand and you don’t have to travel to the ends of the earth to buy them. You can order yours by phone.Mail order and stockist enquiries: 0171-727 1515 Shop, 4 Brewer Street, London W1 Angela Hale, Royal Arcade, Old Bond Street, London W1 The Cross, 141 Portland Road, London W11 Moose, 87 Regent’s Park Road, London NW1 Blue, 35 Lapwing Lane, Manchester.. Next Tuesday evening, four critics will, as usual, attend the first night of a new production. This time, though, they will not be waiting to pass judgement, but to have judgement passed on them.

The four – Michael Billington (The Guardian), Jeremy Kingston (The Times), Nicholas de Jongh (The Evening Standard) and James Christopher (freelance) – have all agreed to take part in a theatrical experiment They have all accepted the invitation to direct a play. The season, at BAC in Battersea, has already attracted intense media interest. When it was first announced, it made the 8 o’clock news bulletin on Radio 4’s Today programme: civil unrest in Albania; poisoned water in southern England and critics on stage in south-west London. Attention focused, inevitably, on the appealing idea that the critics might be given a taste of their own medicine.