Design for Life
This year’s Asia’s Most Stylish cover story is all about curves and angles—and I’m not just talking about the eight fashionistas who jetted into Macau to star in our epic three-day shoot. With its kaleidoscope of geometric shapes, flowing futuristic interiors and soaring 35-metre high atrium, our venue, the Zaha Hadid-designed Morpheus hotel, proved an architectural supermodel in its own right. Our Most Stylish award recipients—one from each of Tatler’s eight Asian titles—were excited to pose against its dramatic arches and bold textured walls, taking as many selfies as our photographer, Joel Lim, did shots. “It’s not often you have to compete against your shoot location,” joked Fanny Tsai, our Most Stylish Woman from Taiwan, “but these interiors are really attention-grabbing. I’m going to have to up my game.”
For our cover, Ming Ho-tang is captured twirling against the hotel’s skeletal glass and steel interiors dressed in Christian Dior. In another shot Ming, who is the director of corporate development at Li & Fung, delivers a heavenly hit of chicness in a floral Dolce & Gabbana dress framed by a cascading glass chandelier in the finedining restaurant Alain Ducasse at Morpheus.
Filipino model and TV personality-turnedpolitician Lucy Torres-gomez pairs a striking striped Proenza Schouler dress with the elegant earth-toned furnishings of Chinese restaurant Yi, while 21-year-old Instagram star and style influencer Natasha Lau looks suitably serene by the sky pool in a Louis Vuitton dress and dazzling Cindy Chao earrings. Turn to page 100 to see the full shoot and read the sartorial musings of our Most Stylish awardees.
We continue to celebrate ground-breaking design in State of Play, a visual essay on page 124 that explores the 10th anniversary exhibition of home-grown architecture studio Eskyiu. Oliver Giles takes a tour with founders Marisa Yiu and Eric Schuldenfrei and discovers a fun retrospective that invites visitors to don gym gear and shoot hoops.
Approaching architecture from a wildly different perspective is experimental theatre director Mathias Woo, who has teamed up with the queen of Hong Kong rock and roll, Josie Ho, for a show inspired by our unique cityscape. Titled The Architecture of the City and inspired by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Aldo Rossi’s seminal book of the same name, the concert will use multimedia, music and theatre to explore the relationship between a community and their physical surroundings. With a set crafted to resemble bamboo scaffolding, and costumes made from recycled plastic, paper and cans, this show promises to be the hottest ticket in town, so check out our story on page 43, then get booking.