Meet Generation T

Introducing the game-changing young talent on Hong Kong Tatler’s Generation T List. This month—the co-founder and creative director of one of the city’s most exciting design brands

This month we meet the co-founder and creative director of one of the city’s most exciting design brands, Genevieve Chew

Edit has come a long way since starting life as a boutique in Soho in 2011 cofounded by Genevieve Chew. Four years down the track it evolved into a fashion brand. Editecture, an architecture and interior design arm, soon followed, as well as a concept store in Wong Chuk Hang. Edit’s ensembles are to be seen at some of the best upscale stores around the globe, with four collections released each year. The brand’s success is largely down to Genevieve, its creative director, who started her professional life in a somewhat different field, chartered accounting. Here, Genevieve introduces her work in her own words.

When we founded Edit, the brand, in 2015, we were able to bring it to an international level in the first year.

We have stockists such as Shopbop, Selfridges and Liberty distributing our products overseas. It happened very organically. There was a lot of hard work, but I think we also got quite lucky because we never envisioned that this would happen so quickly. We were spotted by a showroom called Paper Mache Tiger from London through social media. They have showrooms in Paris, London and New York. They approached us and we were like, oh, yeah, why not?

We had a group of customers who knew about the Edit aesthetic, which is very art and design-inspired.

Very sculptural and minimal. Some of them had backgrounds in F&B or had their own companies, so when they were looking for an interior designer or architect, they approached our architectural arm, Editecture. That’s how we got projects such as Green Common, and now we’re doing a lot of schools as well. You can tell that they want something different and well thought through.

When a woman wears our pieces, we want to make sure she feels good and elevated.

I think that women these days—or at least our customers—are more knowledgeable. They want to be part of a lifestyle and support a brand that has substance behind it. In the past it was more about the hype. If a certain brand was really popular, everyone wanted to be spotted in the same shoes, the same sweater. But now I think it’s about how you feel about yourself when you wear a certain piece of clothing, and the longevity of the piece as well. Having conversations with women, knowing what they like to wear and how they like to feel, is very important.

I get inspired by art and design.

We like to use volume and structure in our clothing, and I like to see how geometric movement works. I’m constantly on Instagram looking for inspiration—interiors, old chairs—to see how we can intertwine that with our lookbooks and our collections. I also love colour palettes; I love to see how different colours come together.