LAST WEEK 30-something Jonone spent two nights holed up in a designer clothes shop in Causeway Bay. Once the last customer left, he locked up, shoved a couple of racks of clothes out of the way and covered the floor with sheets of plastic. Then he got down to doing what he does best: graffiti.
Jonone has been splashing walls with paint for more than 20 years. But when he started, as a 16-year-old in New York's roughest neighbourhood, he never thought that he would find himself doing the same thing on the other side of the world for fashion label Agnes B.
Jonone was born John Perello in 1963. His family was poor and his prospects, as a Hispanic youth in Harlem, were not good.
'Most Hispanic kids like myself, we either ended up in jail or in rehabilitation centres. New York at the time was controlled by yuppies, we felt like we were invisible,' he said.
Tired of walking into shops and being followed as though he were a thief, he decided to stamp his mark on the world and began writing his name on walls - and then trains. What began as a simple tag line, his signature, soon developed into a series of designs.
He was not alone - there was a network of underground graffiti artists - and he soon joined them. They did not see their work as vandalism, but as a community service, providing art for all, and a way of affirming their identities.
'People kept trying to tell me what to do and I just wanted to be free. My work was a way of saying 'I am here. I am alive',' Jonone said.