Cover Mimi Thorisson on her Hong Kong cookbook memoir, the Chanel Première timepiece, and a life written on her own terms
Mimi Thorisson on her Hong Kong cookbook memoir, the Chanel Première timepiece, and a life written on her own terms
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This October, Chanel’s Première Rendez-Vous dinner in Paris brought cookbook author Mimi Thorisson to a table of extraordinary women—an evening captured everything she believes about time, connection and living well
Author and culinary workshop host Mimi Thorisson was raised partly in Hong Kong and having lived between Europe and Asia, she is, in her own words, “a bit of a rebel”. She has simply never liked being told there is only one way to live. “Perhaps I have never really wanted to be ahead of my time, or even to keep up with it,” she tells Tatler. “I have simply wanted to live in my own time.”
Shaped by a food-obsessed father from Hong Kong and long summers in the south of France watching her grandmother and aunt cook, she went on to study finance before a move to a French farmhouse changed everything. A kitchen blog led to a cookbook deal, a French television series and a devoted following. Now based in Turin with her Icelandic photographer husband and family, she has published four cookbooks with a fifth on the way.
Above Mimi Thorisson joins Chanel Première Rendez-Vous in Paris
Above Mimi Thorisson joins Chanel Première Rendez-Vous in Paris
Mimi Thorisson joins Chanel Première Rendez-Vous in Paris
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“I suppose I have always preferred taking the scenic route in life,” she says. It is a sensibility she finds mirrored in Chanel. When she joined the Première Rendez-Vous event in Paris this October, Thorisson felt a “beautiful sense of curiosity and wonder”.
“I love observing people, admiring them, and listening to their stories.” Held in partnership with publishing house Hurs, the evening gathered established women from across the creative world—a gathering as much about the wisdom of time as the watch that inspired it. That same spirit also travelled to Hong Kong, where Tatler and Chanel hosted an intimate dinner at The China Club. “[Each guest of the night] seemed to share the same feeling, each with her own relationship with time—constantly balancing it, sometimes chasing it, sometimes wishing we could slow it down, always trying to make the most of the lives we are creating.”
Above Mimi Thorisson joins Chanel Première Rendez-Vous in Paris
Above Mimi Thorisson joins Chanel Première Rendez-Vous in Paris
Mimi Thorisson joins Chanel Première Rendez-Vous in Paris
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Her French mother taught her that elegance is not what one wears but what one carries within: a certain discretion, a quiet confidence, a woman with nothing to prove. “It is this idea of timelessness, of remaining true to yourself, that resonates with me the most.” The Première, she says, represents that same quiet independence; the freedom to follow your own path. It is a freedom the watch expresses with understated confidence: the house’s design language distilled into a single object of style and individuality.
I don't think of time as something I am losing, but rather something I am collecting.
Above An evening in Paris hosted by Chanel, bringing together women from the creative world
Above Mimi Thorisson opens up at Chanel Première Rendez-Vous in Paris
An evening in Paris hosted by Chanel, bringing together women from the creative world
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For Thorisson, time is not something lost but something collected during a long family lunch, a slow-cooked dish, a wander through a market, a conversation that stretches for hours. “Sometimes, the most precious moments are the ones when we forget about time altogether.” That instinct for reflection shapes her books and her three-day culinary workshops, particularly those in Hong Kong, where she revisits her childhood while celebrating the city it has become.
Above Mimi Thorisson in Paris for Chanel Première Rendez-Vous
Above Mimi Thorisson in Paris for Chanel Première Rendez-Vous
Mimi Thorisson in Paris for Chanel Première Rendez-Vous
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Her current project, a cookbook memoir of Hong Kong, draws on a box of photographs, memories and memorabilia gathered over the years, “a little box locked in time” that she opens whenever she needs to return.
“I don't think of time as something I am losing, but rather something I am collecting,” she says, “I often find myself looking back, remembering places, people, tastes, little moments that somehow stay with you forever. I think the past has a wonderful way of enriching the present and even shaping the future.”
Cathy Huang is the fashion editor of Tatler Hong Kong, overseeing fashion and lifestyle coverage in both English and Traditional Chinese.
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