Watching Marjorie Yang and Dee Poon pose for a recent photo shoot with
Fendi, it’s impossible to ignore the sense of ease and comfort that the mother and daughter feel around each other. They laugh, hold hands and even walk the same way. If anything, years of being under the spotlight of Hong Kong society has only brought the two women closer.
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“I’m probably the only child in the world that goes around insisting that my mother is beyond amazing and the coolest person ever,” says Poon, a former writer and film director who joined Yang at the textile and apparel-manufacturing Esquel Group in 2009 as chief brand officer of the premium men’s shirt brand
PYE.
“Dee is a tiny version of myself,” counters Yang, the chairman of Esquel. “When I want to make fun of her, I call her Margie 2.0.”
The duo have been brought together today by Fendi, in celebration of its Peekaboo bag, but it’s obvious they don’t need an excuse to meet up or collaborate. Poon, whose father is Harvey Nichols retail tycoon Dickson Poon, was a magazine editor and columnist whose short film
An Exercise in Futility was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009 as part of the
One Dream Rush film series. She went on to create dysemevas, a pop-up concept telling the stories of today’s China through the work of Chinese designers,
before joining Yang 10 years ago to turn around the struggling PYE label.
Yang, who oversees Hong Kong-based Esquel’s vast international manufacturing network that produces more than 110 million cotton shirts a year, describes her relationship with Poon as the most rewarding experience of her life.
“The best part has been watching her grow into the mature and caring women she is today,” Marjorie Yang says.
Both women credit the other for being an independent, critical thinker, a quality that has allowed them to work across gender and cultural barriers. “Dee’s interests are broader than mine, perhaps because of her academic background,” Yang says. “Having studied philosophy, her interest spans the humanities as well as science. This is, of course, most fashionable in the age of AI.”
Indeed, Poon -- now the managing director of Esquel Brands and Distribution -- has long been active in environmental activism and taking a humanistic business approach. At the China Fashion Gala 2019 in May, she was honoured with the Sustainability Award for her work with Esquel to bring sustainability to the forefront of the global fashion industry.
The latest project that she and Yang are focused on is Integral, an “industrial eco-tourism garden” that aims to rethink and transform the traditional manufacturing model. The first so-called factory of the future was unveiled in March in Guilin, introducing cutting-edge technology while providing workers with a more productive and quality working environment.
“We’re trying to showcase a different way to operate in atraditional industry. Integral is taking up a lot of our energy because it’s more than a business opportunity, it’s about putting our philosophy and ability to the test,” Yang says. “We want to tackle climate change and the wealth gap; here’s our solution.”
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