CELINE KWAN
Hong Kong
“If you don’t feel beautiful, how are you supposed to create beautiful things?” asks Celine Kwan, the Hong Kong-born, London-based designer who graduated from Central Saint Martins, customised pieces for singer Lizzo and staged her work in the Love of Couture: Artisanship In Fashion Beyond Time exhibition in Hong Kong—all within the past two years. You can feel the infectious enthusiasm emanating from the young designer when she speaks and also of course, from her energetic, made-to-be-seen, often dramatically floral designs.
Her work is the result of her upbringing in both the east and the west. Kwan left Hong Kong to attend a boarding school in the UK when she was 12, and there found her passion for fine arts and design. “Humour is a very continuous theme of my work—I don’t take things really seriously,” she says. “The humour from all the Hong Kong films, [especially] Stephen Chow, that I used to watch, and the tongue-in-cheek [quality] of English jokes and their dryness: I think I’ve brought that [into] my work.” But inspiration alone does not create success, and Kwan, who always knew what she wanted, invested time in forging a precise direction and developing the necessary skills. “I’m super grateful for all the opportunities that have happened, but I’ve definitely worked very hard,” she tells. While studying fashion design and print at Central Saint Martins, Kwan enthusiastically sought outside opportunities. Instead of spending one year interning as the course requested, Kwan spent two years cutting her teeth at Roksanda, Viktor & Rolf, and Shrimps; each played a part in directing her own design vision, and in teaching her what fashion design work is
