Hong Kong fashion designer Charlotte Ng has a lot on her plate. One week before debuting her capsule shoe collection Indie Walker for I.T blue block in Hong Kong's Festival Walk, she's also considering whether she's got the boots right for her own SS19 collection, Rythmization, and the photographs shot for the campaign. Ng just launched her eponymous Charlotte Ng Studio label yesterday, prior the I.T collaboration. 

Between lunchtime courses of courgette soup, orange roughy with ratatouille and glasses of Sangria at La Cabane restaurant on Hollywood Road, Ng, wearing a pair of her I.T cutout black leather loafers with a belted dress and split blouse from her own collection, highlights a mismatch between the liberty and adventure of the clothes in her new campaign that doesn't translate to the feet; in Ng's SS19 collection, the model wears military-style corps boots in black/silver metallic but rather than free the spirit, they seem to weigh her down; as though she's ready for her moment of freedom but is all dressed up with no place to go. 

"My collection is about a woman ready for adventure," Ng says. She rolls the thought around her head and the Sangria like she's repositioning accessories on a dress. "I'll reshoot the boots," she decides, make them less rigid, more devil-may-care. 

It's no small irony that we're discussing shoes with such vigour. "I don't really consider myself a shoe designer," says Ng, a former Institute of Fashion and Textiles graduate from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, despite winning the Best Footwear Design category at the Hong Kong Young Fashion Designers' Contest, 2018 (YDC), in which she also won a prize as runner-up in the Best Fashion Designer category. The footwear award is a Hong Kong Trade Development Council initiative, sponsored by retail group I.T, in which the winner creates a capsule collection available at the brand's stores.  

Designers were judged on the following criteria: creativity and originality, market potential, workmanship, use of fabric, and overall visual appeal. What distinguished Ng's fashion collection was a harmonious quality to the concept, a balanced, wearable, layered, mix-and-match look which exhibited mainstream playfulness alongside a more couture-y aristo-Scottish asymmetrical chic, emphasising cut, print, textiles and process. In other words, it ticked a bunch of relatable boxes. The whole collection was influenced by Radiohead's song Everything In Its Right Place, and Ng had even taken sound waves from the track as inspiration for design on the shoes and some of the looks. 

Over molten chocolate dessert and coffee, Ng considers her evolution in the context of her new collection. "For SS19 I am inspired by a sort of cow-girl character who seems always brave and tough enough to handle everything by herself. Studs, eyelets, long strings, metal ends, rope, belt and slits show what is happening in her adventure." Versatility matters too. "Items in the collection are flexible, and some of them can be worn in two ways. I want women to be empowered by this collection to have their own style, personality and unique attributes."  

Of which Ng seems imbued with plenty. Post-lunch she's sitting on a chair designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier at The Annex, Nan Fung Place, showing as part of French May's Le French Design, so Starck, so Bouroullec..., exhibition of iconic furniture and design. She takes her phone and reveals pictures taken on a recent trip to Paris, inside and outside the Centre Pompidou, with images ranging from geometric, symmetrical street scenes and surfaces to the work of German painter Gerhard Richter. Ng has drawing, art and photographic talent. And she paints. And perhaps as preface or motivation to her Rythmization collection, she creates her canvases in the park, outside. She shares with us an abstract work that evokes both Thomas Ruff and Richter. "I call it 'The Fantasy Moment'," she says.

Ng recalls how her original idea had been to mix two very different feelings of colour and brush texture (hard/strong, vs supple and soft) and technique, hoping the two would 'react' in the middle of the work under the application of chemical liquid. "Where the colours met in the middle I poured on chemical liquid and let them react and mix together. It's a random process but I like the way they reacted and finally resulted in harmony. It's a very simple painting but I liked the process of creating it." 

It's a revealing admission - as much for the approach she takes to her art as she does to her fashion.  

Which leads us to the matter of branding, and more specifically, how one's name or label should look, i.e. how black-black or light the ink, how thick, which typeface, which font size, any icons by way of animals or graphic design trick or gimmick. "I have thought about this a great deal," says Ng. "I'm thinking that maybe the name on the label could be combined from different elements, or even have something more artful about it. But when I looked at my name, I felt the two 't's stand out somehow, so I wanted to emphasise that part of the name by having a space after the 'o' and before the double 't'." At which point we discuss capsule collections or pop-ups and bespoke or private-client couture-y confections which could take the abbreviated brand name 'tte'. 

The first time ISBN spoke with Ng after September's awards last year, she had stressed how important creativity was to her fashion. "It should be the dominating principle when we design. It would be depressing to sacrifice creativity." However, keeping up with the ever-changing demands of the fashion world had made her feel somewhat unfocused. "It was the Radiohead song Everything in Its Right Place that reminded me to strive always to breakthrough. I simply wanted to convey abstract emotions in the sound waves of their song into design in the hope it may inspire and encourage others through visual stimulation." 

Ng cites Japan's Rei Kawakubo as the majority of her inspiration and stimulation. "Her avant-garde aesthetics show the greatest creativity in fashion. Every single piece of her work is just like an art piece."

One week later at I.T blue block Fashion Walk on June 11, the i.t. shoes x YDC Best Footwear Design Award Capsule collection arrives and goes on sale. It comprises two styles; loafers, and sandals/slides, with lines on the surface inspired by musical sound waves and the metal element inspired by plugs used for audio equipment. Celebrity Charmaine Fong and dynamic stylista Chloe Mak arrive to support the winning designer, both looking appropriately snazzy and dandy in Ng's shoes. "I hope the collection encourages people to be brave and move forward, set out your own path and live your own life fully," says Ng. "I'm delighted that my winning design has been commercialised and launched in the market. This marks a significant step in the development of my personal fashion brand." 

Of which we're keen to learn two things. First, which music inspired her upcoming third collection AW19, debuting in September, and second, for one so seemingly shoe-shy, what form will her award-winning next steps take.  

Images: ISBN; The Fantasy Moment, courtesy Charlotte Ng Studio; HKTDC