Life's all downhill from here
Louise Kou loves to entertain, so it's fortunate that she lives in a large old house on the Peak which looks as if it was built specially for parties.
Half a century ago, the beautifully proportioned rooms and terraced gardens were laid out on a hill in what was then a rural setting overlooking the charming harbour of Victoria. There is still much charm, despite the modern intrusion of glittering towers and the murky curtain behind which Kowloon has retreated. Five years ago, Kou and her husband moved in and on this fine stage she began to introduce her friends to the art of The Occasion.
As Asian managing director of the fashion company Escada, she has a good sense of both the visual and the theatrical. There have been maharajah parties, Hollywood Oscar nomination parties ('I was Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman') and fireworks parties. She tries hard to avoid being predictable - on the night of the handover she had a Brazilian party complete with band, tropical-themed marquees at the front and back of the house, and energetic lambada dancing by 160 guests.
Not that her socialising is always on such a large scale. More intimate dinner parties for up to a dozen people are held at the house too, and that's when Kou likes to plan her table settings. 'I love cosy areas to eat in, and I'm always exploring corners here to use as a different environment for dining,' she says. At the moment, she has four favourite spaces around her home which she themes according to season, food and guests' preferences.
When the weather is cool, she serves hot pot out on the terrace with heaters wheeled alongside to take off the chill of the night; there are also roller blinds which can be lowered during rainstorms.
The effect Kou creates is stimulated by her love of Bali. An Indonesian garuda mask hanging on the wall will, according to superstition, protect the house; there are ikat shawls thrown over the chairs; pale green miniature troughs from Bali - originally intended to be used for soap or pot pourri - make a set of unusual sauce dishes.
'When you have them all together on the table, it makes a statement. Just one or two can get lost.' The chopstick rests are jade pieces Kou has picked up on her travels. 'I like to mix cultures and things whether Japanese or French or Balinese or Chinese.' She has a different selection of more ornate jade on the table of her dining room which is intended to be a slightly formal theatre for entertainment. A birdcage in the centre of the table is filled with shining handfuls of jewellery.
'When you're a busy working lady, you don't have time to go to the market for flowers so I dress it up like this. It's therapeutic doing it, I don't think about business and all my problems.' It may look like a Chinese film set but the constituent pieces of the dining room were originally globally far-flung. The Japanese lacquer trays were bought in Los Angeles, the cutlery came from Paris, the black-and-gold fabric runner gleaming across the table was purchased in a Beijing store (and wasn't very expensive, as Kou honestly points out, although it looks it in this dark, glossy room) and the gold dishes and candlestick holders on the table were sourced at one of Altfield's shops in Hong Kong.
Another Hong Kong hunting ground is Nuconcepts in Duddell Street, Central, where Kou found the wooden bowl, satin-smooth and wonderfully heavy, which she likes to place at the centre of the table when she dines out in the garden.
'I love the texture of the wood,' she says. 'And it suits eating out at the back where it's so green and lush.
'When we moved in it looked like an overgrown mountain and it was only when we brought over a landscape gardener, Eric Nagelmann, who did the garden of our home in Santa Barbara, that we found out there were terraces here. In Bali, we usually stay at The Four Seasons or the Aman resorts and this is what I'm trying to re-create here - a little hideaway in the jungle.' She has planted torches among the mossy steps and the Balinese carvings, to light her table on still, warm evenings.
Again, for the table here, she uses jade - this time rings of it for napkins. She asked a stonecutter to carve lumps of quartz, with lines of golden thread through it, into 'dragon-turtle' shapes for chopstick and cutlery rests. She brings out a tablecloth from New Delhi and place-mats which were made in Bali but bought in the south of France.
There is a Balinese-style umbrella to protect guests from sun - or rain. 'Once we were having lunch outside and there was a thunderstorm and we didn't have one minute to run into the house, so 10 of us stood under the umbrella for half an hour, unable to move. But I hate drizzle. I like it to pour, it's more dramatic.' What about quiet moments at home with her husband? 'When the weather is terrible and there are just the two of us, we like to dine in a cosy corner of the hall upstairs, just outside our bedroom. That's where we have breakfast.' In cheerful seclusion, they can begin their day over fruit and tea in an area Kou calls 'earthy and soothing'. It's a mixture of linen napkins, chunky ceramics from Germany (Escada's head office is in Munich), and rattan chairs which are another purchase from Nuconcepts. There are also exquisite amber-coloured trays, made by an Italian designer in Bali.
'As a child I always loved to buy these things,' recalls Kou. 'I'd ask my parents for tea-sets, and I'd play at being hostess. Now I collect crockery and all these objets d'art, and I love to put them into use. It's my hobby and it's how I unwind.'
