Clothing carries the weight of time, sustains the essence of a city, and personal experiences. As one of the Emerging Designers of CENTRESTAGE 2025, selfFab. Founder and Creative Director Menu Tsai uses Hong Kong as a starting point, later connecting with Tokyo and Shanghai, observing how a city’s texture seeps into garments, and how an attitude forms through every seam and silhouette.

As a key highlight of Hong Kong’s fashion scene, this year’s CENTRESTAGE gathers brands from around the world with selfFab. being a cutting-edge brand that stands out. Founder and Fashion Designer Menu Tsai designs with the ethos of “Remake, Reconstruct, and Replay”, reworking the threads of old clothes, silhouettes of uniforms, and the city’s visual codes to breathe new life into vintage materials and create new narrative spaces for these everyday details from the past.

selfFab.’s design language evolves from “embracing hybridity”. The brand melds memory and culture, including the pace, aesthetic and culture of Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Shanghai, into garments that are both protective and futuristic. The sleekness of uniforms, the logic of workwear, and remnants of old items amalgamate, blurring the boundaries of style and broadening the possibilities of clothing.

To Tsai, clothing not only holds memories and stories, but they are also an indicator of one’s current and future identity. From the mashup of high and low culture, to creating clothes that can “change”, Tsai interweaves clashing “fragments” and turns them into the skeleton of new garments, instilling within them a spirit.

Through the interview with Tsai, it’s evident that she’s absorbed in the relationship between clothes and their wearer, and how this relationship is constructed through silhouettes, materials and remixing attitudes. As “self fabulous” entails, the hope is that everyone who wears selfFab. embraces their own unique interpretation.

VOGUE HK: Rooted in Hong Kong yet creatively navigating across different cities, how do you see the visual and cultural codes of Hong Kong? Which of them do you find irreplaceable and essential to preserve in your design language?

Menu Tsai: I was born and raised in Hong Kong, and I think one of the most defining cultural codes here is our natural way of embracing hybridity. It’s hard to pin down a single visual element that’s “irreplaceable,” but what feels essential to me is this instinct we have—to mix things that don’t traditionally go together, and somehow make them work. That’s very Hong Kong to me.

In my design language, this shows up as unexpected combinations. For example, in our last runway show, we had models wearing actual football cleats on the catwalk. At first, people were like, “Wait—how can you walk in those?” But I said, “Well, think of them as the male version of high heels.” A year later, you see IG influencers wearing studded boots everywhere. I think that says something about how style can shift when you challenge the rules.

This kind of spontaneous mash-up creativity comes from growing up in a place where East and West, old and new, high and low culture all collide. That collision, that tension, is what gives Hong Kong its unique taste. It’s not about preserving a fixed tradition, but about keeping that flexible, remixing spirit alive.

VOGUE HK: As a creative brand grounded in Hong Kong and active across cities, how does selfFab. define its own cultural identity? And how is that identity expressed through the brand’s visual and design language?

Menu Tsai: For me, selfFab.’s cultural identity has always been fluid and evolving, because I don’t believe in sticking to one fixed image. That’s boring, right? We’re all changing—growing older, shifting with the times—so why shouldn’t a brand reflect that?

At its core, selfFab. is built on transformation. We don’t design for just one type of person or lock ourselves into one visual style. Our design language is intentionally diverse—it reflects a mix of influences from the places I move between Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Shanghai. Each city gives me something different, and I naturally bring that into the work.

In Tokyo, for example, I feel like selfFab. introduced a different attitude, especially toward how people view football culture. We reframe it, twist it, and make it emotional or symbolic in unexpected ways. Some people love it, some are confused—but that reaction is part of the dialogue. I think that’s very Hong Kong too: not just borrowing culture, but remixing it into something new.

VOGUE HK: Your work is often described as contemporary and culturally bold, yet trends are by nature fleeting. How would you define selfFab.’s contemporary aesthetic, and how does it relate to the idea of timelessness or the classic?

Menu Tsai: Yes, selfFab. is rooted in change and transformation—but that doesn’t mean we’re chasing trends. I don’t see “contemporary” as something fleeting. To me, it’s about expressing cultural ideas in a way that feels honest to the moment we’re living in.

When we remix sportswear kits or traditional silhouettes, it’s not for nostalgia or novelty—it’s about asking deeper questions: What does identity mean today? How do uniforms or garments shape who we are? I think when you work from that kind of cultural tension, the result might look bold or new, but the attitude behind it can be timeless.

So even though our forms and materials keep shifting, our core stays constant: we use fashion as a tool to reframe culture. That’s not trend-driven—that’s a kind of long-term language. And I believe that can become classic.

VOGUE HK: Sustainability is often reduced to a matter of materials, yet selfFab. builds on the pillars of Remake, Reconstruct, and Replay. How would you explain what design-driven sustainability truly means to you?

Menu Tsai: To me, design-driven sustainability is about creating clothes that can change—whether it’s through how they’re worn, how they adapt to different occasions, or how they can be remade into something else later. It’s about extending the life of a garment, not just through durability, but through emotional relevance.

In a world where we have too much, we also tend to value things less. If you get bored of a piece and throw it away, that’s waste—not just materially, but creatively. But if a garment carries a story, or if it can transform and go with you through different phases of life, then it becomes something worth keeping.

That’s why at selfFab., we work with the ideas of Remake, Reconstruct, and Replay. It’s not just about materials—it’s about designing pieces that are modular, adjustable, and emotionally resonant.

We’re not here just to make sustainable clothes. We want to make clothes that people want to keep.

VOGUE HK: By reworking vintage materials and reconstructing garments, selfFab. introduces new language into each piece. How do you see craftsmanship fitting into the context of contemporary fashion today?

Menu Tsai: Like I mentioned earlier, we want to create clothes that people want to keep. That’s why we spend a huge amount of time reworking vintage materials, piece by piece. It’s not just about aesthetics—it’s about building garments with stories inside them. Clothes that spark conversation. Clothes with content.

To me, craftsmanship today isn’t just about “making something from scratch” in the traditional sense. At selfFab., craftsmanship is also about reconstruction—hunting for vintage pieces, understanding their past lives, breaking them apart, and reimagining how they can be transformed. That process, from concept to patchwork to form, is very intentional. It’s slow in its own way. It’s care made visible.

So yes, I absolutely believe that crafting something from fragments—physically and emotionally—is a valid form of contemporary craftsmanship. It’s not about perfection. It’s about depth.

VOGUE HK: Among the works you’re presenting at CENTRESTAGE, which piece best represents the evolution of selfFab.?

Menu Tsai: One piece that really captures the evolution of selfFab. SS25 was a reconstructed blazer we made using fragments of a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu uniform, combined with a kimono-inspired silhouette. It’s tailored like a classic suit, but its structure carries the spirit of martial arts and traditional Eastern forms. That piece speaks to how we remix cultural function into fashion form, and how selfFab. is always questioning what a “uniform” means.

Another one that stands out is a showpiece inspired by fencing gear. We exaggerated the silhouette to feel both protective and elegant, almost like futuristic armour. That contrast is something we’ve been exploring more deeply: between structure and emotion, function and symbolism.

VOGUE HK: selfFab. comes across as bold and unapologetically expressive. Do you think there’s a sense of softness or subtle emotion in your work that reflects a more personal side of you?

Menu Tsai: Absolutely. I think every designer leaves parts of themselves in their work, because the most honest material we can draw from is our own experience. Whether it’s from how we grew up, what we’ve gone through, or how we see beauty, these things are deeply personal. So yes, there’s always a more emotional, subtle layer behind the boldness.

That said, selfFab. doesn’t try to turn everyone into a version of me. The name stands for “self fabulous,” and I believe everyone who wears selfFab. has their own way of expressing it. It’s not about imitation—it’s about reinterpretation.

That personal softness? I think it’s there, not in a dramatic way, but in how each piece carries part of a lived experience. It’s in the way we let things clash or fall into place. And maybe that’s what makes it feel real.

VOGUE HK: What cultural narratives or themes does selfFab. hope to explore next? How do you see fashion as a medium to respond to them?

Menu Tsai: Lately, I’m interested in exploring how disappearing fragments of local culture—especially from 80s and 90s Hong Kong—can be reinterpreted, not nostalgically, but as living codes that still have something to say today.

I don’t want to recreate the past. I want to evolve it. Whether it’s a forgotten brand, a street style attitude, or the emotional palette of old Hong Kong cinema, I’m curious about how those cultural traces can be edited, clashed, and rebuilt into something new. Fashion, to me, is a way to test those possibilities. It’s not about dressing like the past—it’s about asking, what if that past had never ended? What would it look like now?

That’s the kind of cultural narrative I want selfFab to keep exploring—one that’s hybrid, evolving.