In Conversation with Flora Leung, Founder of Matter Matters
We visited the designer in her PMQ store to talk about the fashion and lifestyle brand’s origins, its Bauhaus, Memphis and Art Deco influences, and her experiences of working in Hong Kong’s creative scene
Design Anthology: What lead you to establishing Matter Matters?
Flora Leung: I'm an anti-fashion person, so I wanted to start a brand that doesn’t create waste for the planet. Good design should always be like this. The Matter Matters handbag has been the same colour since 2013, but people still want it. I always wanted to see a fashion brand with this attitude, and that's why I created Matter Matters. I also wanted it to be a little bit intellectual, to make you think before you buy. My collections aren’t that fashionable or trendy, but they somehow last longer. I want to create something that after 20 years my daughter will still love.
I had a vintage handbag store for six years before founding Matter Matters. My friends say ‘Oh, no wonder your bags look a little vintage.’ I’ve also worked in an advertising agency and what I learned from there is that you need to think before you design anything, and I think that's why people find our brand quite consistent.
You work across graphic design, photography and product design, and the Matter Matters Studio offers these creative services, too. How do each of these different disciplines combine in the brand?
I always incorporate the aesthetic of the golden ratio, which I learned from graphic design. So even if I'm taking a photograph of a product, I’ll count and find the space, the golden ratio. It’s the same with the products themselves.
Can you describe the Matter Matters style?
Clean lines. When people think of Matter Matters, they think about colours and geometrical shapes. There are some students who would describe a design by saying, ‘That is so Matter Matters’. The accessory is the highlight of the whole outfit.
I’m inspired by the Bauhaus, postmodernist, Art Deco and Memphis movements. And not just visually — it’s the whole attitude to designing something that lasts longer by keeping it very clean and powerful. Even as a design student, I never liked a lot of detail.
Who's the customer you design for?
I'm so happy that all my customers are actually designers. They’re all creative people from around the world. We’ve survived this long, I think, because they’re willing to pay the full price when they see the product, they're not buying anything because it’s cheaper.
Do you have any advice for designers who want to branch out and set up their own labels?
I just hope they aren’t afraid of designing because they think their designs might be taken or copied. If you make something really different, people will remember it. They’ll know that it’s from you. Don’t become frustrated, just keep designing. Even if for the first five years people don’t notice, in 10 or 15 years they’ll remember.
What advantages or challenges have you faced as a creative based in Hong Kong?
As a creative person in Hong Kong, I think that we’ve been trained pretty well in a really competitive city. When you do something here, you’ve got to change things up fairly regularly in order to compete. But you have to have your own style, and figuring out how to do that can be challenging sometimes. I find in some cities, restaurants can serve the same ten meals for ten years; they don't change too much but they survive. You can’t do that in Hong Kong. If you change too slowly you're going to fade out. Besides that, we also have the problem of high rent.
A big challenge is that I don't have 48 hours in a day. It’s hard for me to hire another designer and train them, because I’m just too busy — I travel so much and am always working on a new collection, which we need to have every six months. I want to keep everything to a high standard, but then I just end up doing everything myself to get it done quicker. You wouldn’t imagine that I just have one merchandiser in the office helping me. We have two sales people in the stores, but in the studio there are just two of us, it’s a kind of slow fashion.
As told to / Babette Radclyffe-Thomas
Images / Jeremy Smart
