ans of Mr. Lieou, the minimalist, East-meets-West fine jewellery brand founded by Hong Kong designer Nicholas Lieou in 2011 (and rebranded under its current name in 2019), may be surprised to learn that during his early days in jewellery—around the mid-Aughts, when he was earning his MA in metalwork and jewellery from London’s Royal College of Art—his aesthetic was considerably more elaborate than it is today.
“The design was a lot more floral and chinoiserie-inspired and a lot more ornate,” Lieou, 43, tells Europa Star Jewellery on a recent video call from his studio in Hong Kong’s Aberdeen neighborhood. “It was really that maximalist aesthetic. And that was influenced by all the internships I was doing at the time: I was doing pieces with Shaun Leane for Alexander McQueen, Phillip Treacy, Lara Bohinc. They were all very much about muchness.
“It was also a time in London where maximalism was the way to express yourself,” Lieou adds. “If you look at my final collection at Royal College of Art, it was heavy brocade embroidery, feathers and all the rest of it. Now I’ve flipped completely 180.”
A distinctive style
Today, Lieou is admired for making spare, monochromatic jewels—often set in 18-karat grey gold—that emphasise silhouette and texture over colour. Despite a C.V. that includes high-profile stints with big jewellery names such as Alexis Bittar and Tiffany & Co., his look is distinctly his own. He unveiled its creations in May 2019 in Geneva at the GemGenève fair.
That may be because Lieou, who was born and raised in Hong Kong, doesn’t come from a jewellery family. “I had quite a traditional background,” he says. “I wasn’t very strong academically. Thankfully the art teachers recognised I had some kind of talent.” At age 18, a foundation year at Central Saint Martins in London proved liberating. “You do two weeks of every discipline,” he recalls. “For the last term, I decided to train as a jeweller. And I really enjoyed that.”
Jewellery’s intimate scale, not to mention its permanence, appealed to Lieou. “We talked in millimetres,” he says. “Everything was very small, very manageable. Small details make a big difference.”
After graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2008, he returned to Hong Kong to work for the fashion house Blanc de Chine in the aftermath of the financial crisis. The role taught him how to balance personal vision with brand identity. “When you’re working for design houses, it’s not about you,” he says. “The main focus needs to be what the house is about.” On the side, he quietly began developing his own pieces.
A move to New York in 2011 to join the fashion jeweller Alexis Bittar, as associate creative director, exposed Lieou to the frenzied momentum of fashion. “Vogue would call and say, ‘We’re doing a swim shoot in 24 hours, we need 24 neon-coloured bangles.’” The pace was frenetic—Lieou often found himself glueing crystals on to a model’s outfit right before a shoot.
A few years of freelance design work, for brands such as Georg Jensen, followed, culminating in 2015 with a position at Tiffany & Co., where Lieou served as director of design, high jewellery and custom design alongside then-design director Francesca Amfitheatrof. “You’re coming in at a level where money is no longer an issue,” he says. “It’s about a way of life.”
The intensity clarified his own philosophy. “I became so busy that I didn’t want to think about wardrobe,” he says. “I was just creating a jewellery wardrobe for myself.”
That idea—a jewellery wardrobe—became foundational.
After leaving Tiffany in 2018, and signing with a showroom, Lieou had a realisation. “The wholesale retail market in the U.S. is a lot more everyday wear. Maybe I should create something more everyday and wearable because you just want it as part of your uniform.”
The power of light
Back in Hong Kong by 2019, Lieou refined that concept, just in time to design a fancy coloured diamond collection in 2020 for Sotheby’s Diamonds. He does not design by season, nor does he create bespoke. “It’s quite organic,” he says of his design process. He develops pieces gradually, builds a body of work, then presents them at trunk shows. Production is based in Hong Kong and Shunde, in southern China.
Innovation, for Lieou, lies in restraint and engineering. His Lucent earrings, for example, feature rose-cut diamonds in half-bezel settings that leave part of the stone open to allow in more light. “A lot of the beautiful cutting is on the side of the girdle,” he explains. “I wanted to expose as much light as possible.”
Lieou draws inspiration from the Hong Kong landscape, often subconsciously. The Grid collection, including a ruby bracelet and earrings with a chequered grid, echo a 1960s Hong Kong car park façade he passes daily. “Sometimes you don’t realise it until after the fact,” he says.
He favours grey gold as a signature and draws colour from natural stones—ruby, jade, chalcedony—rather than enamel or ceramic. Even texture becomes expressive: baguette diamonds set upside down create a subtle spikiness; black rhodium is matte, sandblasted. The effect is sleek and architectural.
Mr. Lioeu’s jewels range in price from roughly $3,000 to $50,000, with a handful of high jewellery pieces reaching $200,000. The “sweet spot,” he says, is $10,000 to $20,000. Most clients are in Hong Kong, but he caters to jewellery lovers around the world.
Since 2021, Lieou has also served as creative director of high jewellery and signature collections at Chow Tai Fook, China’s largest jewellery retailer. His designs for the company’s more traditional clientele interpret Chinese culture in a pared-back way. “A lot of the time when Chinese culture is used as inspiration, it’s quite heavy,” he says. “We took a lot of that imperialness out of it and made it more clean-lined and simple.”
Balancing both roles requires discipline. Lieou admits he works less intensively on his own label now, but the dual practice is symbiotic. Looking ahead, he envisions steady, organic growth—via participation in more design fairs outside Hong Kong, such as PAD London, and events aimed at clients in the Middle East and the U.S.—but he’s not aiming for global domination.
“I’m in no rush to create a big name,” Lieou says. And why should he be? His instantly recognisable designs speak for him.
