From the moment you enter Chloe Chen’s Repulse Bay boutique, it is obvious that she is a fashion designer who has built a lifestyle that is just as covetable as her clothing.
“My mum is my muse. She was a very cool, independent woman with a creative side, who loved art, reading and writing. I always loved the vintage styles she wore in the 1970s, and this image of her has inspired me my whole life,” says Chen.
Chen was born and raised in Taitung, a small beach town in Taiwan – a place where fashion barely existed, let alone mattered. During high school her mum taught her how to sew, but it was only when she went to university that Chen started redesigning her mother and grandmother’s vintage clothes to create a wardrobe her friends envied.
“When you’re young, you are passionate and don’t think about money. You dream. So I spent all my money on rent and filled the store with furniture I found on the street or at garage sales,” she says. “Business was so good that I started to manufacture shoes in South Korea to match the clothes, followed by T-shirts, which I designed and made in Sham Shui Po. They were so popular that we sold 1,400 pieces in different colours,” she remembers.
Yearning to do more and learn more, she moved to New York to study fashion marketing and shoe design at Parsons School of Design. A move to Shanghai followed in 2010, and her business really took off thanks to securing an investment from an LVMH-backed fund. At the height of her success, however, she made the difficult decision to take a step back and close half of her 22 boutiques in China.