My story
I moved to Hong Kong in 2008 with my family. I had a few intense years previously, studying Interior Design full time with three young children. When. my husband broached the idea of moving, I jumped at the chance. I reasoned that I had to move anyway, as we had plans to renovate our home in Rose Bay. So before I knew it, we were on a plane and moving to HK.
Even though we left our family and friends behind, I fully embraced my life in Hong Kong. I became the chair of HKYWCA English Speaking Members Department which kept me busy for a few years in addition to my duties has a mother and wife. In 2012, I had been doing a few interior projects for people that I knew in HK and I started to conceive of a blog and online store called Eclectic Cool. It gained quite a bit of traction- you can see a profile of me from that time here. The store is still in operation online in Hong Kong and we still ship worldwide.
Over those years, I gained a lot of experience designing for clients as well as running the store. We moved from a warehouse in an industrial area of Hong Kong, to a cool up-and-coming neighbourhood called Po Hing Fong.
It was a great time and we built a great business , representing some amazing brands such as Gubi, Normann Copenhagen, Armadillo & Co rugs, Dinosaur Designs, Northern ( a Danish lighting and furniture company), andtradition and HAY. We still stock a few items from each of these brands on our online store in Hong Kong.
In 2014, Hong Kong went through all sorts of turmoil. We had moved our store from Po Hing Fong (on the western part of the Island) to the Star Street Precinct Wan Chai. At the time, this seemed like a good choice, as the area was filled with small boutiques and there were a number of large office building nearby. However, just as we were opening, the protests of that year cut us off and we had no traffic at all for around three months. It was a tough time and we worked through it but at the end of our lease, in 2017, we decided to close our doors and operate online.
I was still doing some projects in Hong Kong and building our house in Berry, in the Shoalhaven NSW, so this kept me pretty busy. However, due to travel restrictions in COVID times, my husband and I decided to head back to Australia and base ourselves here.
Berry is a beautiful area and we find it very inspirational.
As you can see from the image below it is really a great place to live.
The view to Wollongong from Saddleback Mountain Lookout
The colours of the local area inspired my own branding for StudioLuxicon. I am surrounded by a beautiful sub-tropical rainforest in my beautiful corner of Berry. The green of the eucalyptus trees, the sand and surf of Seven Mile Beach and sandstone escarpment have inspired my palette. Here it is here:
The colour palette for StudioLuxicon
I’ll do a deep dive into choosing a palette for your design business at a later time as this is quite a complex choice that you need to make at a very early stage of your business. In my case, looking out amongst the trees and seeing glimpses of the coast, inspired me to choose these colours. They make me feel very happy and are a contrast to the neon colours that I used with Eclectic Cool- inspired by the neon lights of HK.
I’ll be writing a lot more about my branding and design process- as a multi-hyphenate, I love including brand identities in my interior design process- I think of my designs almost as a branding exercise, it’s an interesting way to approach it. My story in a nutshell!
