Nicholas Lieou is one of the most innovative designers of the moment (and of the coming years) ♦︎
He’s one of the most interesting and innovative designers. And it’s a safe bet that he’ll be a role model for the new generation of jewelers, now emerging at the highest level. Not only that: Nicholas Lieou is the new creative director of fine jewelry at Chow Tai Fook, a Chinese company founded almost a century ago by Chow Chi-Yuen as a gold jewelry store in Guangzhou, China. In the 1930s, Chow expanded the business with additional stores in Macau and Hong Kong, where it is currently based. Lieou must elevate the brand’s image and create new, exclusive collections: his first collection is called Rouge.
The designer, however, has worked for his own brand, Mr. Lieou, in recent years. Previously, he studied jewelry design at Central St Martins, the Royal College of Arts, and the Fashion Institute of Technology in London and New York. After completing his studies, he began working with prestigious luxury houses, including Tiffany & Co., as Director of Design for High Jewelry in 2015. Mr. Lieou also represented, in a certain sense, the new face of the world, with his mix of cultures, ethnicities, and experiences. Born in Hong Kong, Lieou was educated in Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, and San Francisco. He is a perfect blend of the borderless aesthetic, combining his experiences in New York and London, where he graduated from the Royal College of Art.
Lieou debuted his own Maison in 2019. But his career has been underway for some time: he also worked for brands such as Louis Vuitton, Georg Jensen, and Shanghai Tang, before being appointed Director of Design for High Jewelry and Custom Design at Tiffany in 2015, and now at Chow Tai Fook. An incredible, rapid, and exceptional career thanks to his own work. Very original, very creative, very remarkable.
His jewelry is boundless, with a bold technique that uses titanium, gold, diamonds, and precious stones. There’s no trace of Orientalism: the designer’s Chinese roots are instead fused into a style that allows minimalism to expand like an erupting volcano, somewhere between French Baroque and Rococo. It’s no coincidence that he has presented two jewelry lines: Minimalist and Maximalist.
