Artisan-made fashion, home decor celebrates Mexican, Cambodian heritage of two entrepreneurs
- Mika Rouge sells one-off, hand-embroidered accessories and clothes, such as mother-and-daughter dresses, from Oaxaca and Chiapas in Mexico
- Cambodian silk weavers create cushion covers and throws for KBEN & HOL which, like Mika Rouge, was founded by a Hong Kong-based woman entrepreneur
Karla Prompers-Marin and her (almost) three-year-old triplets are the perfect adverts for the Mexican clothing and accessories range from her brand, Mika Rouge.
“I’m from the north of Mexico, from an entrepreneurial family, so I’ve always wanted my own business,” says Prompers-Marin as she settles on the couch of her flat on The Peak – Hong Kong’s most upscale neighbourhood – her girls Sophie, Amelie and Juliette, all wearing colourful dresses from the Mika Rouge Mex range, jumping energetically around her.
Hong Kong has been her home for the past seven-and-a-half years, but Prompers-Marin has lived and worked around the world – in Boston, London, and Dubai – with jobs in fields from human resources to recruitment and logistics. As a confessed lover of shoes and bags, fashion was always on her radar.
“I started with leather bags as a hobby,” she says of the beautifully crafted, brown and black, multifunctional bags on which her brand was built. “But while pregnant, I was on bed rest for eight months – I did a lot of Sudoku – and after the girls were born I literally had my hands full, so I took some time out from my company.”
As her family grew, so did her desire to expand her brand to include items from Mexican artisans. She wanted to celebrate her culture and bring the country’s unique embroidery to the rest of the world, having failed to find any place to buy handmade Mexican fashion in Hong Kong.