At 28, Rosita Kwok Pak-yin, the second runner-up at Miss Hong Kong 2020, has taken on a new role as a fashion founder.
Just months after launching her own fashion label, CLARO, Kwok is taking on a different kind of challenge: building a brand from scratch.
She brings CLARO to CENTRESTAGE 2026 as part of Hype², a new pavilion showcasing fashion labels led by local celebrities and KOLs.
‘Less is more’
For Kwok, CLARO is rooted in a simple idea.
“Timeless,” she told The Standard when asked to describe the label in one word.
The idea did not begin with a business plan. It started with something much more personal — a piece of clothing she had been looking for herself.
Kwok has long liked stripes, but struggled to find a particular cut and pattern that matched what she wanted. That search eventually became one of the starting points for CLARO, with the piece recreated for the label.
The result reflects her own approach to dressing: clean, understated and versatile.
“Less is more,” she said.
Rather than filling a look with different colours and details, Kwok prefers pieces that can stand on their own. She wants the clothes to remain wearable beyond a particular season or trend, allowing people to return to them repeatedly.
That thinking can also be seen in the collection’s office-inspired pieces, which draw partly from her own experience of working in an office before entering the entertainment industry.
Among the collection, Kwok picked out a few personal favourites, including a striped piece and a white design.
Stripes have also become a defining detail of the collection. Dorian Ho Kwok-ching said buyers visiting the booth were quick to notice them, reinforcing the idea that a young label needs something memorable.
The brand’s visual identity is still taking shape, and building it has meant learning an entirely new industry for Kwok.
She is not a fashion designer by training and said she has had to learn many aspects of building a label from scratch, from developing the clothes to shaping the brand’s direction.
CLARO was launched in May, and Kwok described the months since as fast-paced but exciting. She said she had learned quickly, while her team, including Dori and Jo, helped remind her of details she might otherwise have missed.
Building beyond celebrity
As a new label, CLARO is still finding its footing, including how to balance its product positioning with its pricing.
Ho said the focus is on offering customers the best possible products, while noting that there is room to adjust prices as production volumes increase.
For Kwok, building a fashion brand also means balancing two identities.
While her work as an entertainer puts her in front of the camera, CLARO requires her to take on a role behind the scenes — developing products, discussing details and making decisions about the brand’s direction.
Her personal style and experience naturally shape the label, but she wants CLARO to develop an identity beyond her public image.
That is particularly important given the perception that celebrity-led fashion brands can simply become merchandise.
Kwok wants people to understand the thought behind each piece and the ideas that shape the collection, rather than seeing CLARO simply as something carrying her name.
The support of fellow artists and friends has also given her encouragement as the brand gets started. Several arrived in CLARO pieces at CENTRESTAGE, including TVB actor Matthew Ho Kwong-pui.
A pop-up is planned for late October, giving CLARO another opportunity to meet customers beyond the fashion trade show.
For Kwok, the focus now is on putting in the work and letting the brand speak for itself.
“If I can, I would spend 90 per cent, 95 per cent — definitely more than 90 per cent — of my time showing everyone that I put my heart into this,” she said.
