in my element House of the rising son Menswear designer Lee Pak-man tells Kawai Wong why he returned to his furniture roots. The 28-year-old founder of Hong Kong menswear label The Perfect Tangent has returned to his family business, Nuovo Collections, supplying designer furniture to homes in Hong Kong and Beijing. In the process, he picked up Capital Weekly’s Rising CEO of the Year 2012. I trained at the Fashion Institute of Technology where Marc Jacobs is an alumni. I have always loved design. Although when I was studying fashion, I often questioned whether it was the fashion, the art or the design that I enjoyed more. I still don’t have an answer. Maybe I love them all.
Cracking the fashion world can be challenging. It wasn’t finding the inspiration to ceaselessly come up with collections, but the production and manufacturing side that took the wind out of my sails. For me, interior design is more multidimensional than fashion. Clothes concern only fabrics, buttons, zips and cuts. But with interior consulting projects I get to play with wood, glass, fabrics, wallpaper, lighting and so on.
Staircase replica An uncle gave this to me on my 23rd birthday. The staircase is built on Da Vinci's Golden Ratio.
Lee Pak-man at his Happy Valley showroom and studio.
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My fashion label, The Perfect Tangent, got a lot of press from the likes of Wallpaper*, Men’s Folio, Time Out and fashion blogs, the terrible economy in Europe and the US meant my fashion showroom in Milan had to drop a few labels. I had big brands such as GlobeTrotter and Y3 to go against. Unfortunately I didn’t have the same commercial machine they did...