How “Made in Hong Kong” is Being Transformed

From the moment Elaine Yan Ling Ng founded The Fabrick Lab in Hong Kong in 2014, she challenged the conventions of what textiles can be. Blending modernism and tradition, science and craft, eggshells were made into luxury tiles, while ancient weaving and indigo dyeing techniques from mountain villages in Southeast Asia were reimagined for contemporary interiors, and Swarovski crystals became kinetic sculptures.

Now, as The Fabrick Lab celebrates its 10th anniversary, Ng has turned her experiments inward with Reverie, the first collection designed for her own studio, and showcased in Engineered Reverie at DX Design Hub in Sham Shui Po until November 27. Her engineering and artistry produces paper that holds architectural form, copper that gleams in sculptural forms, and suspended, shimmering Lurex.

“Reverie textiles are scalable and can be ordered and made in a reasonable time frame,” explains Ng. “For instance, before, when fabrics were handmade, it would take six months for six people to weave a 24-metre-long paper fabric, but now it takes weeks. People can now pick a fabric from the catalogue. This is what made the Reverie Skin collaboration possible.”

The joint project was created with Hong Kong-based Belgian architect and fashion designer Katerin Theys. A chance studio encounter turned into a cross-disciplinary experiment when together they recast Ng’s Reverie textiles into a bomber jacket and skirt that behave like no other garments — structured yet fluid, metallic yet supple. 

Their partnership is what happens when design disciplines meet, and how Hong Kong’s compact, shared ecosystem enables them. In most production chains, the textile designer and the fashion designer never meet, let alone work together to experiment in creating a sewing pattern.

Reverie Skin is different. Ng and Theys approached the project as a dialogue rather than a handover, each learning from the other’s world until a new vocabulary emerged. Metallic threads that might have stiffened a fabric instead created flowing pleats. Shoulders kept their architectural accuracy while the jacket moved like silk. Crochet buttons made entirely of paper punctuated the surface with handcrafted charm. The result is glamorous garments designed to move, to last and always, to surprise.

Lucky collaboration

Their alliance began almost by accident. Ng had long admired Theys’s architectural approach to fashion, but only met her a year ago when she stopped by Theys’s Central studio to buy a dress. Since she had some of her own sample textiles to hand, the two began draping them, curious to see how paper and metal behave on a body. “It was an instant connection,” recalls Theys. “We were not thinking about creating a garment. We wanted to see what happens when textile engineering meets fashion construction.”

Ng’s textiles, developed for interiors and furniture, were never intended to move. Theys’s designs, conversely, are architecture in motion. Each designer brought a different way of problem-solving to this study in re-engineering: how to sew seams for paper metal fabrics without tearing them, and how to let them drape without losing structure. Theys works like an architect, solving physical spatial problems through form and volume, whereas Ng operates as a material scientist of craft, translating handwoven logic into digital knitting systems. When their skills intertwined, new possibilities appeared.

Digital knit-to-shape pattern pieces replaced traditional cutting and sewing. Every element, from seams to pleats, was planned at the fibre level, reducing waste by around 20-35 per cent, and turning production into precision manufacturing as engineering became aesthetic. All the materials used are recycled or are recyclable.

It takes more than a village

Such innovation depends on teamwork beyond the studio. Hong Kong’s maker network of small workshops, family businesses, craftspeople, and advanced knitters across the Greater Bay Area played a critical role in translating handwoven prototypes into programmable designs, preserving the irregular beauty of handcraft through industrial clarity.

“This is what is extraordinary about Hong Kong,” Theys says. “You can walk into a workshop and find people willing to experiment, who bring their expertise to the table; they are co-creators.”

In a city often dismissed as having lost its manufacturing base, Reverie Skin explains that Hong Kong’s craftsmanship has not vanished: it has evolved, and now thrives in smaller, adaptive spaces, driven by problem solvers who understand both tradition and technology.

Their involvement has expanded as Ng, whose materials have appeared at Art Basel, Design Miami Basel, and London’s V&A, sees Reverie Skin as proof that change happens not in isolation but in exchange. Theys, who moves seamlessly between fashion and interiors, describes it as “architecture for the body,” an experiment that reveals how materials themselves can lead design.

Perhaps the most remarkable outcome of their inquiry and research is that when paper behaves like silk, when copper becomes cloth and when furniture textiles turn into couture, it is not by accident, but a consequence of discipline, culture and craft.

As Hong Kong’s creative economy progresses, collaborations like Reverie Skin support local expertise, not nostalgically but as a state-of-the-art achievement. 

Ng and Theys are already exploring future phases, from scaling zero waste textile tailoring to adapting materials for new contexts, and continuing their debate between form and fabric, a joyful tribute to intermingling materials, minds and cultures — new languages of design, born from curiosity and accomplished in Hong Kong.

Engineered Reverie runs at DX Design Hub until November 27, 2025.