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A model wears a “tea shirt” from Yat Pit’s autumn/winter 2023 collection, called “The Power of Tea”, at Paris Fashion Week in February 2023. The item has a teabag embedded in its front and can be boiled at home to dye it. Photo: Fashion Farm Foundation

‘Tea shirts’? Hong Kong indie fashion label Yat Pit’s unique takes on local culture and Chinese heritage are making it one of the city’s most refreshing brands

  • From the harbour skyline to folding chairs at street food stalls and chaotic local neighbourhoods, Yat Pit’s inspirations span a range of Hong Kong hallmarks
  • Its latest collection, shown at Paris Fashion Week, highlights the Chinese art of tea-making, with its hero item a ‘tea shirt’ that you can take home to ‘brew’
Fashion

In reinterpreting Hong Kong’s local culture and traditional Chinese heritage through a contemporary lens, Yat Pit has made a case for itself as one of the city’s most refreshing independent fashion labels.

Amid a fashion industry saturated with fast-paced collections and trendy aesthetics, the brand goes against the grain with its subtle yet statement-making pieces: think delicate qipao silhouettes and new-meets-old Zhongshan suits, alongside calligraphy-inspired mesh garments and monk-style crossbody bags.

Yat Pit presented its autumn/winter 2023 collection – called “The Power of Tea” – at Paris Fashion Week in late February before heading to the showrooms at Shanghai Fashion Week in March.

Only now are co-founders and designers Lai On-ying and Jason Mui Ging-leung processing the brand’s long-awaited international debut.

A look from Yat Pit’s autumn/winter 2023 collection. Photo: Fashion Farm Foundation

Lai grew up in Hong Kong and studied at London’s Central Saint Martins, while Mui grew up in the UK and went to Nottingham Trent University. They met in 2015 when they were both living in Hong Kong and became fast friends due to a shared interest in fashion design and cultural research.

Within just weeks they began looking for a studio together and their label was launched in the same year.

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Yat Pit means “one stroke” in Chinese. Lai and Mui took the words from the Cantonese idiom sap waak dou mei yau yat pit, which translates as “ten strokes but yet to have a slash” – meaning that without the “one slash” (yat pit), even 10 strokes cannot form a Chinese character. The phrase conveys the notion that without action, intentions mean nothing.

The designers did not always know that their Chinese heritage would be the crux of their brand, but they “went in that direction organically”, Lai says.

After years of living in the UK, they had both come to develop a tourist’s eye for Hong Kong, and a new-found appreciation for their hometown in all of the city’s details, flaws, beauty and uniquely Chinese heritage.

Yat Pit co-founders and designers Lai On-ying (left) and Jason Mui at their new studio in Wong Chuk Hang, Hong Kong, on April 12, 2023. Photo: Yik Yeung-man

Similarly, Yat Pit’s involvement in this year’s Paris and Shanghai fashion weeks helped the duo to “step out, have a breather and come back” to appreciate Hong Kong all over again, especially after three years of restricted travel.

Yat Pit’s month-long trip was a whirlwind one for the designers. The duo were funded by Hong Kong’s Fashion Farm Foundation, which took care of styling, make-up, casting and many more aspects of the brand’s presentation and showroom presence.

For Lai and Mui, getting the chance to present at those two fashion weeks was the culmination of eight years of hard work. Paris, in particular, was new and unfamiliar territory – though the duo saw this as an opportunity rather than an obstacle.

A look from Yat Pit’s autumn/winter 2023 collection. Photo: Fashion Farm Foundation
A look from Yat Pit’s autumn/winter 2023 collection. Photo: Fashion Farm Foundation

“After this Covid bubble, which can make you feel creatively stale, to have the opportunity to present the collection in Paris, where there are fresh eyes, a fresh market and fresh energy – it was really rewarding and creatively energising,” Mui says.

Meanwhile in Shanghai, the duo met industry professionals who had been following Yat Pit since the beginning and were excited to see the brand up-close after years of following it on social media.

“We interacted with so many designers and different people,” Lai says. “It was intense and manic, as if we were compensating for the past three years of Covid stagnation.”

“It was nice to hear and see people’s reaction to Yat Pit,” Mui adds, “because we’d been in the Hong Kong bubble for so long that we nearly forgot what it was like to see new people’s [reactions] to the brand.”

Photos of Yat Pit’s creations at its studio in Wong Chuk Hang. Photo: Yik Yeung-man
Fashion designs on show at Yat Pit’s studio in Wong Chuk Hang. Photo: Yik Yeung-man

Ultimately, both cities widened their horizons.

“Being in another environment with different working styles and lifestyles, you get to see other possibilities and learn something new,” Lai says.

In Paris, the brand worked with a local stylist who showed them ways to style their pieces that they had not thought of before, Mui adds. “It was a nice way to change up the feeling of the season.”

We want to influence and inspire and to act as a tunnel into the rabbit hole [that is Chinese culture]
Yat Pit co-founder and designer Jason Mui

Yat Pit has cited a wide range of Hong Kong-specific inspirations in the past, from the city’s Victoria Harbour skyline to folding chairs at dai pai dongs (street food stalls) and the chaotic Sham Shui Po neighbourhood.

Then came the “The Power of Tea” collection, which stemmed from research into the ancient Chinese art of tea-making and the Taoist and Buddhist philosophies accompanying it.

While creating the collection, the duo dyed garments with tea leaves and played with the idea of creating a wearable perfume.

“Every fashion brand has a fragrance that is their bestselling product,” Lai says. “We started brainstorming what ours would smell like and thought it’d be interesting to have the scent in the garment. It then became a concept rather than an actual [perfume].”

A look from Yat Pit’s autumn/winter 2023 collection. Photo: Fashion Farm Foundation

The hero item of Yat Pit’s new collection is a “tea-shirt” with a tea bag embedded in its front. Inspired by old-school tea houses’ classic paper packaging, the garment is string-tied and comes with a headscarf.

Several ancient Chinese and Taoist references are printed on the scarf: from a verse written by the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu expressing that the Chinese character for “tea” is composed of a human in between grass and trees, to a yin yang symbol and the Chinese characters for heaven, earth and human.

The result is an immersive experience: the consumer takes the package home and boils the shirts themselves to dye the “tea tee”.

Lai at Yat Pit’s studio in Wong Chuk Hang. Photo: Yik Yeung-man

The design process consisted of weeks of trial and error, from using different tea leaves to trying various fabrics and testing how long the garment would have to be submerged in the tea water so the colour stayed.

But that is the essence of what Yat Pit is: an in-depth, research-based practice that proposes traditional yet contemporary perspectives in a world where fast fashion reigns supreme.

Mui at Yat Pit’s studio in Wong Chuk Hang. Photo: Yik Yeung-man

Despite the storytelling aspect of their collections, the designers insist on not assuming the role of educators.

“We’re also educating ourselves,” they say almost in unison. Lai clarifies: “We did not start out already knowing about tea. It’s through the research and design processes that we learn together.”

“As much as the storytelling is for everyone else, it’s for us as well,” Mui adds. “We want to influence and inspire and to act as a tunnel into the rabbit hole [that is Chinese culture].”

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