Anfu Lu, Monday lunch, French Concession

Dropped at Le Sun Chine at twelve-thirty. Mandarin came back on the cab radio before the lobby did. Bag in the room, jacket off, walked the Rue Wagner block to Anfu Lu by one.

Anfu on a Monday lunch is not Anfu on a Sunday brunch. Editor crowd thinner, copy-deadline crowd thicker, more single-laptop tables, more solo coffees. Egg cafe corner was full but moving. Manner Anfu-flagship had a longer line, mostly stylists in head-to-toe wash-out grey or sand. Two coffees down, marble round-table window-side.

The light here is older than the light in Aoyama. Plane-trees longer, building-facades softer, Wagner-villa stucco pulls the warm-tone forward. Yongkang Lu one block south runs colder, that is the lunch-stretch route I will walk after Caroline Hu showroom.

One subject anchor in the first thirty minutes. Woman alone at the Egg cafe second-window-table, mid-twenties, Shanghainese-something. Read four pages of a Pronounce lookbook on her phone without scrolling past, then opened a printed Caroline Hu S/S 27 mood-sheet and went still over it. Editor-track, not model-track. Worth a soft follow-pick if she shows up at the Pronounce showroom door in two hours.

Full field walk starts at one-thirty. Caroline Hu showroom at two.