I was born in Hong Kong in 1961 to an Austrian mother and a Chinese father. My father worked in the family business, part of the Shaw Studios, on the distribution side. In those days, respectable women didn’t work and from what I understand my mother wasn’t allowed to work.
She would say she was “only” a housewife, but what an incredible job that is. When I was a little girl and people asked me what I wanted to be, I’d always say “A cook and a mummy”. Today, I am a mother to three, grandmother to one, and I have co-written two cookbooks.
My mother was fashionable in my eyes. Women of that era were exceptionally creative because they had their clothes made. There weren’t many shops and definitely not the Zaras and H&Ms we have today.
We didn’t have many name brands and Joyce didn’t open her boutique until 1971. I remember going with my mother to a tailor in Ocean Terminal. It sparked a fascination with choosing fabrics and creating clothes.
Domestic science was the only subject I got an A in at KGV. I had a Singer sewing machine and could make my own clothes. I wasn’t a budding designer, I just wanted to have certain things.
Nowadays everything has become so casual. It was a different way of looking after yourself and choices were simpler, but you dressed up. I enjoy being well dressed.
I do it for me because it makes me feel good. I left home at 16 to do my A-levels at boarding school in the UK. I went to Woldingham School, in Surrey.
I’m from a very c.