Mishra presents fashion as an empowerment tool for the local craft community in India, often employing their expertise, skills and knowledge. The end result is a slowed-down process of hand-weaving and hand embroidery that helps build sustainable livelihoods for more than 1,000 artisans. Alongside his namesake label, which has six retail stores across India and a strong direct-to-consumer network, Mishra’s newer line, AFEW Rahul Mishra, offers easy-to-wear luxury inspired by nature.
Janice Wong
Culinary artist
After a life-changing food trip to Melbourne, Australia, Janice Wong realised she had a taste for the culinary arts. The Singapore-based chef began combining her perfectionism and artistic eye to create confectioneries that test the limits of traditional dessert, chocolate and pastry making. Since launching her dessert bar in Singapore in 2007, Wong’s brand has scaled globally, taking off in Sydney, Tokyo, Macau, Warsaw, Berlin and the Maldives.
Wong has become known for her signature edible art installations and playful treats like colourful, hand-painted bonbons, chocolate crayons and chocolate paint, each inspired by the intersection between art and design. Her unique desserts have helped to secure partnerships with cultural institutions, such as the Art Gallery of Western Australia, where she showcased her largest edible installation to date, as well as Salon du Chocolat Istanbul, which collaborated with Wong on a chocolate fashion show.
Victoria Tang-Owen
Founder and creative director | Victoria Tang Studio
Born in London and growing up between Hong Kong and Japan, Victoria Tang-Owen realised she had a knack for design while attending school in Tokyo. Since acquiring a degree in graphic design at London’s Central Saint Martins, Tang-Owen’s creative career has spanned photography as well as product and graphic design for some of the world’s biggest luxury brands. Over 10 years ago, she launched Thirty30 Creative with her husband Christopher Owen, a multidisciplinary agency spanning product design to branding, in 2015. In 2020, she set out on her own to begin Victoria Tang Studio, a collaborative platform offering design direction and celebrating Chinese craft.
Under her direction, the studio has partnered with various European couture houses, incorporating the specialised handicraft of Chinese seed embroidery. Some of the brands on her roster include Dior, Self-Portrait and her late father’s label, Shanghai Tang. Tang-Owen was booked by former Dior Men artistic director Kim Jones to work on the maison’s pre-fall 2021 menswear collection, which included a shirt that took 7,000 hours to construct.
Rosio Sanchéz
Chef
Europe’s offering of Mexican cuisine doesn’t often stand up to that of neighbouring nations like the US. Realising the gap in the market was Mexican American chef Rosio Sanchéz, who headed for Copenhagen, Denmark, after cooking up Mexican favourites in her birthplace of Chicago and working as a pastry chef at New York modernist restaurant WD-50. Upon her early days in Scandinavia, she became head pastry chef at Noma, which has been named the World’s Best Restaurant five times.