Second City

Twice a year for more than twenty-five years, Hong Kong. The city has a quality I've never found anywhere else at its scale: navigable like a local within hours of arriving, but always with something new in the corner you thought you knew. I go for suppliers, for fabric and hardware sourcing, for the version of sporty refined dressing that Hong Kong does better than anywhere, and to recalibrate what good looks like from the other side of the world. Last week was that trip.

Where to Stay

The Upper House remains the standard against which I measure everywhere else. The rooms sit right, the views work at every hour, and the service doesn't perform itself. The Murray is the better option if you want to be in the thick of Central from the moment you leave the lobby, a beautifully restored building that earns its position on Cotton Tree Drive.

The Boutiques

Kapok in Wan Chai is the first stop every time. Arnault Castel has been curating international design and fashion here since 2006, and the edit is still among the best in the city, the kind of selection where you pick things up to understand how they were made. Topologie is the Hong Kong brand building an interchangeable accessories system around climbing rope and hardware, the sort of carry thinking that keeps pulling at me for obvious reasons. Their strap system alone is worth the visit. Lojel started in Japan in 1989 and is now based here, and their approach to luggage is quieter and more considered than most of the category. The Monocle Shop on Hollywood Road is a useful edit, less for the product than for understanding which version of things a particular kind of buyer finds worth paying for. Loveramics at Tai Kwun is the ceramics brand behind the official cups of the World Latte Art Championship, set inside the old Central Police Station compound and worth the visit regardless of whether you buy anything.

Food, Coffee, and the Evening

Fuel Espresso at ifc is where the day starts, a New Zealand-rooted operation that has been doing this well in Hong Kong for years. Lunch is The Chairman if you can get a table, Cantonese cooking at the level where technique stops being the point and the food just tastes exactly right. Cardinal Point on the 45th floor of Gloucester Tower is where to land at the end of a buying day, the harbour view doing something useful to your sense of proportion. Bar Leone on Bridges Street is the current number one on the World's 50 Best Bars list, and the reason it works is the same reason any neighbourhood bar worth going to works: it feels like it belongs to the street it's on.

Twenty-five years of the same city twice a year and it still changes the way things look when I get back.