Dee Poon wears the same casual outfit almost every day: blue jeans and a loose white cotton shirt from her menswear label, PYE. The uniform matches her work ethic as CEO of China retail at textile and apparel manufacturer Esquel Group: no nonsense, no fuss, just good-quality products that speak for themselves.
As a fashionista with a sense of practicality, Poon makes a great ambassador for her brand. She is one of the best-connected among her Hong Kong peers - partly thanks to her parents Marjorie Yang Mun-tak, head of Esquel, and Dickson Poon, chairman of Harvey Nichols - and is involved with organisations ranging from Teach for China and the Esquel-Y.L. Yang Education Foundation to the Harvard University Asia Center and International Council of the Museum of Modern Art.
The 30-year-old is a prime example of China's second-generation, foreign-educated, dynamic young entrepreneurs, combining the best of Western and Eastern values to achieve powerful results.
"We want a Chinese base, but we don't want to be overtly Chinese," she says of the ethos behind the PYE brand. "We want to be proud of where we are from without wearing our nationality or culture on our sleeve."
Founded by Yang, PYE has evolved radically since its first incarnation 28 years ago in Beijing. The cotton and shirt specialist is still a tiny player in the luxury fashion market, with five branches on the mainland and Hong Kong. But it is growing rapidly and evolving in every possible angle. "This is the problem," Poon says with a laugh. "It's what I call the uncertainty curve."
