'I rise by 5.30am because I'm at my best in the morning. Life is so full I don't have enough hours during the day, so I carve out some time for myself in the early morning. Firstly, I'll open the windows and the door to my verandah to catch a bit of fresh air, and savour a sip of my favourite green tea from Ugi, near Kyoto. I try to use that spell to reflect. Some people come alive in the evening. I used to but I changed my life to become a morning person.
I do qigong - normally for 20 minutes - to get my whole body energised. I have aches here and there, and the exercise does help. My trainer of 10 years, Susie, comes twice a week at 7am.
I work from an office at home. I need to be inspired by the things I look at. You could call it my art of living. [Fujianese writer] Lin Yutang once said, 'The art of living is very simple. It is what helps you to think and what helps you to feel.' That is one of the reasons I entered the design world.
In the early 1980s, you could say I was one of Hong Kong's first brands. Now, everybody talks about 'branding' - I've never known any other way to go about it. I design in a particular way, therefore I represent the design and I stand behind the brand. People spend a lot of money trying to create this process and I just did it naturally. In the beginning, as an historian, I had absolutely no idea about business.
Back then, I was working in New York. I was staying at my friend's place on 57th and Park - very posh. Every day I'd walk down Fifth Avenue as far as Cartier then cross the Rockefeller Centre into the Time-Life Building. One day I stopped at Cartier and showed them my designs. The general manager said, 'I like your designs very much, but I prefer the jewellery you're wearing.' I was wearing these antique pieces I put together [which I later bought back at Sotheby's]. I eventually designed a collection for them.
I was given a break at Cartier. But looking back, one break is not enough to establish a designer. She has to prove herself again and again, season after season. This is where my sense of history came in. If you know the historical process, you'll appreciate the pulse of change and development.
