There are not many connections between Sun Yat-sen and shoe superstar Jimmy Choo, but Beatrix Ong is one.
Ong is part of a new generation of London designers but she just as easily could have become a doctor, like her two elder sisters did.
'My great uncle Sun Yat-sen graduated from [the forerunner of] the University of Hong Kong as a doctor in the late 1800s,' Ong says. 'My grandfather also graduated from HKU, as a medical doctor, and my grandmother went to Diocesan Girls' School.'
Ong's father, a urologist, practised at the Royal College of Surgeons, in Edinburgh, Scotland, before moving to London to work at Hammersmith Hospital. Ong was born in the British capital in 1976 but moved with her family to Hong Kong when she was six months old, after her father accepted a job in the city.
She attended King George V School, London's Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and Cordwainers College and New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, and had a spell working in advertising before finding her true calling - shoes. She established her credentials as Choo's youngest creative director of couture, when she was only 22.
'I already had a lot of work experience, so when I was offered the role, I was ready,' she says. 'I didn't think about my age at all. I love being as creative as possible within the very strict parameters of a shoe.'