Cover Victoria Tang-Owen (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Law/Chanel)
Victoria Tang-Owen (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Law/Chanel)
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Tatler +
At an intimate dinner, Tatler and Chanel brought together women of substance to reflect on time—the one thing none of us can acquire more of—and the many ways of spending it well
Time is the great leveller, the one currency that is distributed equally and yet spent so differently. At a dinner hosted by Tatler in partnership with Chanel at The China Club, the conversation turned to this paradox.
Gabrielle Chanel never created in isolation. She surrounded herself with artists, writers, visionaries and muses, a circle in which ideas were shared and sharpened over conversation. The evening drew on that spirit: women from across the creative world, gathered under the theme of the Spirit of Première, were invited to consider their own relationship with time and to explore the house’s historic first watch collection, launched in 1987 and inspired by the geometric codes of the brand.
The evening proved to be a meditation on ownership: who time belongs to, how it is protected and what becomes possible when it is finally reclaimed.
Time as a gift to oneself
For artist Joannah “Jobey” Hon, that reclamation has been a long time coming. “For most of my life, my time was never really mine,” she reflects. A childhood of piano lessons, Chinese classes and tutoring, with dinner eaten in the back of a car, set a rhythm that followed her into adulthood, where she filled every minute meeting other people’s expectations.
Today, she wakes each morning and chooses. “After a lifetime of being scheduled, that freedom still feels really special,” she says. Time no longer feels like something to be filled, but something to be given to the things she loves.
It was a theme that Victoria Tang-Owen, creative director, charity president and agency founder, understands intimately. With so many roles claiming a piece of her, she has arrived at her own foundational philosophy. “It’s all about mindset,” she says. She no longer chases time; she treats it as energy, to be invested in the people and pursuits she cares about. Protecting it, she admits, can be a difficult choice, because it means choosing yourself over others. “The to-do list will never end, but you can control the timeline and not let time be the enemy; work with it, not against it.”
Above Joannah Hon (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Law/Chanel)
Above Victoria Tang-Owen (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Law/Chanel)
Joannah Hon (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Law/Chanel)
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The advantage of beginning late
Hon’s own story offers a graceful rebuttal to the idea that timing is everything. She picked up a paintbrush aged 30, convinced she had arrived too late. “Everyone else seemed miles ahead of me,” she recalls. Yet without any formal training, she had nothing to unlearn. Trained artists have told her they struggle to recapture the childlike wonder in her work, having spent years learning what not to do.
Nor were the years before she started painting wasted. Seven years running her own marketing agency taught her how to sell her work online, leaving her independent in a way many other artists are not. “The ‘late start’ became my biggest advantage,” she says. Hundreds of creatives have since written to ask how she does it, or to say she inspired them to begin. “That makes every one of those years worth it.” It is a radical idea, and one that echoes the independent spirit of Gabrielle Chanel: the freedom to follow one’s instincts and define success on one’s own terms.
Above Elizabeth Lo and Olivia Dawn (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Law/Chanel)
Above Mizuki Nishiyama (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Law/Chanel)
Elizabeth Lo and Olivia Dawn (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Law/Chanel)
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Time as becoming
For artist Mizuki Nishiyama, time is a relationship between past, present and future, one in which the past is never finished, only continually reshaped by how we engage with it. Her tapestries give this idea material form. Working with fire, earth, water and air, she burns, buries, soaks and weathers fabric alongside soil from her ancestral land in Japan, where generations of her paternal family have been laid to rest since the 1400s.
The same questions inform her PhD research, which examines how we understand space and time through ma, the Japanese concept of interval, and through feminist thought, in dialogue with philosophers Plato, Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler and Henri Lefebvre. Drawing on the work of American physicist Karen Barad, she has come to see time as inseparable from matter and its transformations. The passing of time can stir anxiety about endings, yet by questioning inherited ideas of what time is, she has come to see the present “as an opening rather than a countdown”, a moment in which to join in with what is taking shape.
Above A dinner hosted by Tatler in partnership with Chanel (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Law/Chanel)
Above Spirit of Première: an iconic timepiece, and a way of being, that belongs entirely to the woman who wears it
A dinner hosted by Tatler in partnership with Chanel (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Law/Chanel)
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The patience of the long view
For filmmaker Elizabeth Lo, time is both a creative resource and a discipline. Her documentary The Mistress Dispeller—which follows a woman in China who hires a professional to go undercover and break up her husband's affair—took three years to realise, much of those years spent pursuing access that initially seemed impossible. The result was the film she had first envisioned. “Only with time and patience could we have achieved this,” she says.
Protecting that time, in the field and in the edit, was, in her words, a sacred part of the process. She and her producers spoke candidly with their backers, not only about the challenges but also about the solutions and contingencies, building a trust that preserved the freedom to experiment and feel their way through the story. Choosing the right collaborators, she adds, was essential to paving the wide path the film needed.
Above Junni Chen (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Law/Chanel)
Above Chanel's Première watch (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Law/Chanel)
Junni Chen (Photo: courtesy of Ruby Law/Chanel)
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The scenic route
While each woman described her own, different relationship with time, all shared the same feeling: that we are constantly balancing it, sometimes chasing, sometimes wishing to slow it down; and always trying to make the most of the lives we are creating.
Perhaps that is the most telling thread running through the evening. Whether time is something to be given, protected, reshaped, collected or simply forgotten for a while, each woman has stopped treating it as an adversary. They have chosen, in their different ways, to take the scenic route. It is a sentiment that sits comfortably with the spirit of Première: an iconic timepiece, and a way of being, that belongs entirely to the woman who wears it.
Above Gabrielle Chanel (Photo: courtesy of Chanel)
Gabrielle Chanel (Photo: courtesy of Chanel)
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Above Chanel's Première watch (Photo: courtesy of Chanel)
Above Chanel's Première watch (Photo: courtesy of Chanel)
Chanel's Première watch (Photo: courtesy of Chanel)
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As Content Director at Tatler Hong Kong, Tara shapes the brand's editorial vision across social, digital and print. She also drives the planning and execution of Tatler's flagship IPs. In her dual role as Head of VIP, she reports on Asia's most influential figures — from CEOs and leaders across business, style and the arts — curates star-studded events, and builds the relationships and communities that define the brand. Born and raised in the Middle East, she honed her craft in Dubai, building communication strategies for luxury brands across the Gulf. Follow her on Instagram @tarasobti.
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