It's Friday night at Dragon-i and visiting sports marketer Nicola Antognetti is casting an appreciative eye over the models streaming into the second floor club on Wyndham Street. 'The women here are beautiful,' he says.
The 35-year-old Italian has just one night to party before returning to Milan where he is a regular at luxe lounge Armani/Prive, so he has taken friends' advice and made his way to Dragon-i.
'This club is famous,' says the avid clubber, bobbing his head to a house beat. 'They told me I had to go here.'
Financial planner Vanessa Taub, 38, also enjoys the vibe at Dragon-i. 'I love the music, energy, crowd and the big dude [guarding the door] ... he's great.'
Clubbers can be a fickle lot and those in Hong Kong are no different, easily shifting loyalties to the trendy nightspot of the moment. Chic lounges opening in Central or Kowloon often enjoy a couple of years' buzz before fading into irrelevance. Some relaunch under a new name, but many go out of business altogether. So how do clubs maintain the hip quotient that keeps the fashionable set returning?
'Hong Kong is a unique playing field. Because of the lack of space, clubs tend to cater to mainstream tastes because they need to bring in a large number of people to recoup their money,' says the blogger behind nightlife website Hongkonghustle.com, who would only give his name as Nat.