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 close-knit family and was quite a homebody. I was incredibly homesick; it was a real yearning. My older brother was already at Cambridge University and he called me every evening.
My younger brother came to the UK later and we would see each other. There was a payphone in the basement of the school, and I called home collect and went home twice a year. I didn’t know what I wanted to study at university.
I’d heard about the wonderful United States system where you don’t have to choose your major for almost two years and can take all sorts of classes. I bought a book on the top 100 US colleges and decided to be on the east coast because it was a little more European and not as wild as the west coast. My boarding school almost washed their hands of me because I was defecting to the US.
In 1984, I went to Bryn Mawr College – some of my aunts had also been there – and I took classes in geology and dance and things I thought I’d never do. I decided to major in German literature and did a junior year in Vienna, Austria. Fashion isn’t just how much you can buy and what brands you can buy, it’s a style.
You can dress beautifully not in designer. How you create an effect, an allure, on a small budget to me is the real creativity. My wardrobe is filled with high- and low-end – and often it’s the low that complements the high.
My own wardrobe is well curated and colour coordinated, I think that’s the Germanic side of me. I met my spiritual teacher, Ocean WhiteHawk, 12 years ago. She is the founder of the Samadhi Training Centre for the Soul.
It is run by volunteers, her students, and offers meditation. It is a place to learn to be a better you. The centre is an important part of my life and has enriched every aspect of it.
All my encounters are different because of what I’ve learned there. It’s ongoing training. It’s at first unlearning all the stuff that has conditioned me over the years and letting go of all that.
It’s in the moment of stillness in meditation that you get clarity. We are called “human beings” but we are not “being.” We don’t take the time to just “be”, we are always doing.
And the doing is glorified. I’m looking forward to developing my spiritual side more and in turn being able to help other people..
