My life: Eddie Lau

I was born in Hong Kong in 1951 without siblings - nor a father. (Lau's mother) said he was a military man from Taiwan. She was a writer, a beautiful, mysterious woman. Occasionally she would disappear from home for days. Sometimes we lived in a big house in Kowloon Tong, sometimes an apartment in Tsim Sha Tsui. I was too young to know what was going on. I stopped using the expression "my mother" when I was 11, when she said to me: "Stop calling me mother; I am not your mother any more." I didn't cry but my heart was in pieces. I could see that coming, otherwise she wouldn't have started ignoring me when I was eight, or sent me to a boarding school in Fanling and not paid my school fees, leaving me to be beaten by the headmaster. At times she'd visit me, bringing me gifts and promising to come again some day, but then never show up. Throughout childhood, I was subjected to her vacillating affection and aloofness. But I don't hate her. Hatred only invites pain for yourself. That day when she told me not to call her mother, I didn't say a word. I went up to the rooftop of my workplace. I looked at the moon and said, "From now on I won't shed a single tear. One day I'll be a star shining next to you."

I started working as a tailor's apprentice in Tsim Sha Tsui when I was 11. I was the youngest among dozens of apprentice boys. I am grateful to the tailor, an elegant, courtly man from Shanghai, from whom I learned to make clothes to order. He told off many boys but never me, and he once said my handiwork could support me for life. I was paid 40 cents a day. In those days a bowl of wonton noodles cost 30 cents. I made HK$12 a month and spent HK$6 learning English at a language school. At 16, I rented a room at Mirador Mansion, bought a sewing machine and set up my own workshop. I gave out my business cards to salesladies at department stores and they started coming to me.

In 1973, I had saved enough money to go to London, where I studied fashion design at Central Saint Martins. I wouldn't have been what I am without this school, which opened my eyes and taught me what design really was. The three years in London were very tough, but I was happy and felt at home. I worked part time as a busboy at a bar to have enough money to pay the rent and top up the coin-operated heater in winter. In my room there was only a bed, a desk filled with drawing tools and a broken chair I found on the street. My poor English was at first a big problem but I learned the ropes fast. When I came across a new word, I wouldn't hesitate to ask a stranger what it meant. The first word I learned this way was "sting", which I saw outside a cinema showing with Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

After London, I brought one of my collections back to Hong Kong. I was then the first local designer who could deliver a full fashion collection. My career soon took off. Fashion magazines featured my works and the Trade Development Council invited me to do a collection for the finale of its gala presentation of fashion, a role normally reserved for foreign designers. I was also lucky enough to have met my muse, Paulona Chai. She was then a supermodel and I just a young designer but she loved my work and would only wear the evening dresses I designed. Unfortunately, at the peak of her career, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour and passed away in the mid-1990s.

Video: Fashion designer Eddie Lau talks about overcoming a tough childhood