Qiqi Yam

Shanghai-born Qiqi Yam began her modelling career at 17 after being scouted on the streets of Vienna. Within months, she was gracing magazine covers, fronting an Yves Saint Laurent perfume campaign and appearing in a Herb Ritts shoot alongside Cindy Crawford and Linda Evangelista—a groundbreaking achievement for an Asian model at the time. Widely hailed as “Hong Kong’s original supermodel”, she paved the way for Asian representation in fashion, walking for Balmain in Paris and Thierry Mugler in Tokyo in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

By the mid-1990s, Yam became the face of beauty brand SK-II, cementing her status as one of the region’s most recognisable faces. In 2017, she merged her passions for high fashion and fine jewellery with the launch of QQM Jewellery—a brand co-founded with renowned jeweller Michael Shum.

In 1997, Yam married Hong Kong actor Simon Yam. The couple have a daughter, Ella.