A typical day for cheongsam designer Ranee Kok starts with taking her boys Anton, 12, and Jonas, six, to school. All the while, she keeps an eye on her phone to field incoming requests so that she can hit the ground running upon arrival at her Wong Chuk Hang studio.

“I try to balance work and family time,” says Kok. “I now concentrate on bespoke cheongsams and qipaos. It is a process with my client: for what occasion will she wear the dress? Single or double piping? Sleeveless, capped sleeves or elbow length? What about the hemline? I see the cheongsam as our version of the little black dress. It is the opposite of fast fashion. Each dress is imbued with memories of the occasions where it is worn and the feelings those moments in time evoke. Some are even passed from generation to generation.”

“Cheongsams are part of our heritage,” Kok states. “Maggie Cheung’s cheongsams in that film represent a time and place in Hong Kong that everyone looks back on fondly. What I am most interested in is how to bring history into people’s lifestyle today. Street fashion has become high fashion and cheongsams can now be worn with trainers. Old fabrics have stories to tell. I sometimes incorporate heritage textiles salvaged from former Hong Kong garment factories into my work. I collaborate with environmental NGO Redress on some of its sustainable endeavours.”

Although she no longer operates a retail store, Kok’s designs can be bought at a Central Market shop. One of her dresses designed for a Canadian exhibition held this year will soon be available at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, where she earned her masters in fine arts through the school’s RMIT programme. “One thing for me hasn’t changed, I still love Chinese history,” says Kok. “I love packaging old things in new packages. Trends fade quickly. Timeless design will always endure.”

For Kevin Mak and Ken Fung, a typical day is playing catch-up. The former Chinese University of Hong Kong classmates have full-time jobs as a photographer and architect respectively, yet they devote every spare hour to their company @streetsignhk. “We started @streetsignhk in 2017 as a platform to rescue abandoned neon signs around the city,” Mak explains. “Master Wu Chin-kai helped us restore our very first sign from a former pawnshop.”

The duo sees @streetsignhk as a platform to introduce public Chinese signage to a wider audience. To that end, they participate in talks, exhibitions and collaborations with the city’s dwindling number of sign makers. They have also collected more than 100 signs salvaged from demolition waste.

With a studio in industrial Kwai Chung, Wu is a veteran with decades of experience in sign making.

“When neon signs were all the rage, Master Wu used to sleep in his studio to keep up with demand,” Mak notes. “Now, commissions are rare.”

“We recently worked with him on a neon Christmas tree for The Upper House’s lobby,” Fung says. He says @streetsignhk created a one-to-one base for its structure and a small model of the final product for Wu to follow as he bends neon tubes to his will.

On his work bench is a full-scale template of the Chinese characters for “Hong Kong, add oil”. It was commissioned by a Korean tourist who wanted a bespoke souvenir that is uniquely Hong Kong. Wu expertly heats a neon tube with gas and blows into it to prevent cracks after bending it to the shape of a word’s stroke.

“Neon offers a warm and inviting glow in comparison to the more common LED lights found in street signage,” Fung explains. “We now see more interior spaces with neon, and their unique moods and effects are promising. Neon sign making is a very Hong Kong craft. Shaping neon tubes to mimic the nuances of Chinese calligraphic characters is a skill that takes decades to perfect.”

“We hope to connect people across different generations and show them the beauty of our heritage through its street signs,” says Mak. “That is what @streetsignhk is all about.”