Tatler Weekend Hong Kong: How Thom Browne stands the test of time by remaining focused and doing what he truly loves

In 2018, Dr Rumman Chowdhury launched the groundbreaking Fairness Tool. This was a solution to identify and reduce bias in artificial intelligence (AI) systems and was an industry first at the time. 

Chowdhury had joined Accenture the previous year as global lead for responsible AI. While there had been significant academic research on how to make AI models more fair, these solutions had not yet been implemented in the real world. That was until Chowdhury’s tool, which demonstrated how organisations could correct for fairness to deploy more ethical and responsible AI.

“Simply put, [responsible AI] is ensuring that AI works for everybody, every human being, every perspective,” explains Chowdhury. “If, truly, we are going to usher in a global change, an economic change, people even say a political and social change, then it is our responsibility to ensure that people are not left behind, that no one is erased by this.”

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Thanks to the signature shrunken silhouette, four-bar stripe and that specific shade of grey, you can spot a Thom Browne fan a hundred metres away. And it is quite the experience to be surrounded by a dozen brand aficionados in outfits they’ve styled themselves—some in mismatched socks adorned with ravens and roses, others in shorts or pleated skirts—when they converge at Upper House Hong Kong to meet the visionary, who visited the city for the first time in six years.

Read more: Style Radar: Thom Browne's Hong Kong Debut

We ask Browne, who also travelled to Tokyo and Shanghai last year to celebrate his eponymous brand’s 20th anniversary, how his signature uniform has been received differently in Asian markets from the west. “You just see the appreciation of it ... people see that focused idea, and understand that there’s so much more to it,” he says.

Bartending hadn’t crossed Shatbhi Basu’s mind as a possible career path. In fact, there were barely any bartenders around when she started out—male or female. Basu had wanted to become a veterinarian. But when allergies prevented her from working with animals, she found herself being steered towards the hospitality industry, going on to enrol at Mumbai’s Institute of Hotel Management. 

“After a period of absolute apathy, my interest grew towards the kitchen, and soon enough it peaked with the Chinese kitchen,” says Basu. After graduating, she joined a hotel as a trainee chef, but when a promised role in the Chinese kitchen never materialised, she left to join a well-known standalone Chinese restaurant in Mumbai. “The chef there did not let me into his kitchen either,” Basu recalls. “But, after working on the floor, I was put in charge of the bar, and that is where my journey really began—at the sideboard of this little restaurant which served as the bar!”

See also: From barista to trailblazer: Meet the visionary Malaysian woman behind Starbucks’s pioneering signing stores for the Deaf community

Armando Aristarco, the Italian executive chef of Ristorante Belvedere, a Belmond Hotel in the Amalfi Coast, has a deep connection with Singapore. He tells us over an email interview that he spent almost five years refining his craft at restaurants such as Labrezza and Tablescape on the island before finally settling back in his home country post-Covid. “I arrived in that city as a fiancé, and there I saw my splendid family come into being,” he muses, sharing that he now has two kids who were born here. That said, returning to the city next year for the Mandala Club x Belmond’s ‘A Taste of Italy’ is something that he looks forward to.

Read more: Belmond partners with Mandala Club to bring gourmands ‘A Taste of Italy’ in Singapore