Video | Hong Kong fashion designer’s colourful, creative home
Lim + Lu employs pastel hues, rich jewel tones and gold details to add glamour, romance and just the right amount of luxe to Paris-based designer’s Tseung Kwan O apartment
Home shoots often begin with a flurry of activity. Rooms are straightened, tables set, cushions plumped and the unsightly carted away. Only when everything is just so, and foreheads are mopped, do our interviewees disappear to ready themselves for the camera.
Not Manix Wong Ping-tao. We arrive at his newly decorated, 500 sq ft rental apartment in Tseung Kwan O to find music burbling in the background and every room picture perfect. Not only that but, attired in a bright blue suit and yellow tee, he perfectly matches his furniture. Or vice versa.
That was probably to be expected. Wong, a Hong Kong-born, Paris-based menswear designer with his own brand, Laclos, knows better than most how to create a look. What is perhaps surprising is that he trusted someone else to pull together colours and textures throughout his two-bedroom flat: pink, orange, yellow, taupe and two shades of blue ensure the interiors pop, alongside metallics, marble, wood and felt.
I like contrasting materials and colours. I said, ‘Just go for the most exciting combinations.’ When I come back here for half the year I want to think, ‘WOW!’
Last year, when Wong decided to move to Tseung Kwan O (he splits his time between Hong Kong and Paris, where he has lived since 1999), he asked for their help.
“He was quite specific about what he liked, and very opinionated about what he didn’t like, so we had a pretty good idea to begin with,” Lu says.
“I like contrasting materials and colours,” Wong offers. “I said, ‘Just go for the most exciting combinations.’ When I come back here for half the year I want to think, ‘WOW!’”
My design philosophy is all about details, quality and finish
Wong also wanted a heavy dose of romance and a lick of luxury, which his designers offered in spades. Gold burnishes the surfaces of everything from table legs to cupboard doors, plant pots and cutlery.
“Gold is a challenging material to use but I wanted luxury, in a contemporary way,” Wong says. “Here, gold is mixed with dark wood and the lines are clean. It’s not like Louis Quatorze.”
Wong’s apartment is also distinctive in its layout. This being a new rental unit, repairs were unnecessary, but neither could walls come down. So the second bedroom is used as a walk-in wardrobe and the living spaces have been reversed: the lounge is by the main door and dining table next to the balcony.
“I love cooking and I wanted to have a nice environment for dinner,” he says. “A lot of Hong Kong people like to watch TV while having dinner but I don’t want the conversation to be interrupted. I want to concentrate on friends, food and wine.”
To that end, Lim + Lu designed a table large enough for parties of 10. Beside it the bespoke sideboard accommodates audio equipment, candles and other handsome accessories; and by the main door a matching cupboard houses shoes. The gold panels on these pieces reflect light and enhance the sense of space; they also emit a lustrous glow, which sits well with the mood lighting Wong requested. Specifically, he did not want to see bare light bulbs.
“My design philosophy is all about details, quality and finish,” Wong says, explaining that he expected the same from his home interiors.
And when presented with furniture (or clothing) choices, he says, he asks himself only one question: “Would I have liked it 20 years ago?” If the answer is “yes”, he says, it’ll be good for another two decades. Which, of course, gives fashion a whole new meaning.
The effect nevertheless is wow.
Tried + tested
Seat plan It makes sense to have multifunctional furniture in small spaces, although it can be difficult to find stylish pieces that are also affordable. The yellow sofa (HK$13,000), sourced by Lim + Lu, offers a neat shoe bench-cum-side table. It came from Uni Space in Shenzhen.
