That’s All Folks!

Some exciting but a little bit sad news: after five fun and exhilarating years of Moustache and eight in Hong Kong, Ellis and I are closing up shop and moving on, following the old overland hippie trail to it’s natural and final stop, lovely Sydney, Australia, where we hope to sample some of that famous quality of life! Ellis is lucky enough to hold an Australian passport, and I’m lucky to be married to him – and not to mention living in a time and a place where that actually counts for something.

We are so proud of what we have accomplished here; it’s been a hard decision to say the least and will doubtless be painful to leave the many, many friends we’ve made here but we’re so excited about this new chapter in our life and hope you will be too.

We’ll be going until Christmas, so still plenty of time to drop by the shop and get fitted up for a suit or two, or simply say hello and chat about all the old times we shared together.

We’ll also be selling most of the furniture and artwork from the shop in the coming months, so stay tuned- we’ve got lots of lovely items for your home or tailor shop needs;)

Moustache Fifth Anniversary, a Look Back, pt. 5

One of the initial inspirations for Ellis and I to start a menswear shop came from a series of trips to Tokyo we took in the Spring and Fall of 2008. We were truly blown away from our explorations there and remain seduced by that fabulous city. So suffice it to say, we were very pleased to be asked by one our bespoke customers, a Japanese man with a really diverse range of business interests, from the city’s Farmer’s Market to architecture to modern furniture design, to stage a temporary tailoring salon in one of his multi-function spaces in Daikanyama, midori.so. We were so happy to have James join us to bring as much of the visual vibe of Moustache from Hong Kong to Tokyo. We also took the time, with the massive assistance of our friends from Midori.so, to compile a small guidebook to Tokyo. While we were not able to return the following year due to some prior committments in Hong Kong, we are finally in the planning stages for our next, long overdue trip to this city we love. We also participated in the debut session of The Hub, a new fashion exhibition in Hong Kong with a heavy menswear tilt. We were very happy to get to meet some great menswear brands from England, France and Japan, which was really great fun, as we haven’t traveled abroad on the international trade fair circuit. These wonderful photographs of that 2013 collection, Uniform, below, are of our new all time favorite Moustache model, thoroughly knocking me out of the running, Mr. Adrian Wong. Adrian’s more than just a pretty face- he’s probably the most famous Hong Kong art star at the moment, and, importantly for our story, now married to our new assistant tailor, Ms. Samantha Reid Wong. These beautiful photos were taken by Wendy Lam and styled completely by her, Sam and Adrian, over a couple of days at the couple’s studios in Wong Chuk Hang, and feature their cute rabbit, about whom they are quite serious! We met Adrian in earnest when he asked us to work with him on costumes for the Art Basel Absolut Art Bar, which he’d been chosen to create for the very first Hong Kong version of this art fair.  That same season, we worked with Yana Peel for the closing Art Basel party. Here Ellis is a ruff, a bowler, and a pink tuxedo, and me in my David Bowie inspired turquoise suit, with our lovely friend Julie Shah. Finally just weeks ago Samantha and Adrian tied the knot in her hometown in England. Though it wasn’t an official Moustache photo shoot, we worked on Adrian’s tuxedo, Sam’s wedding dress and veil, as well as all the bridesmaid dresses and the groomsmen’s suits! Samantha was gone for a whole month, and boy did we miss her! Good thing these guys are so in love, so we won’t have to endure that again. And after a teensy-bit of holiday-making ourselves, we are all happy to be back at Moustache, where we hope to continue making beautiful clothes and adding what we can to the life of this city we now call home.