FUNG'S WAY

Hong Kong artist Tommy Fung started SurrealHK as a hobby; his artwork has since taken the fashion and luxury worlds by storm

- Zabrina Lo

In February this year, Loewe released a collection in collaboration with Studio Ghibli that went viral beyond the world of fashion. The outfits and bags featured characters from the film company's popular 2004 animation Howl's Moving Castle; and while the pieces immediately captivated both fashionistas and film fans, it was a campaign for the bags that attracted a new crowd.

In what at first appears to be just another drone picture of the West Kowloon district, an oversized handbag in the shape of the titular castle swings from an askew International Commerce Centre while two other bags featuring the film's fire demon character Calcifer sit on the picnic area and Turnip-Head blocks the entrance to the Cross Harbour Tunnel. In other pictures, a black bag sits in front of Seoul's Namsan Tower; a brown handbag, filled with Hong Kong skyscrapers, stands next to Taipei 101; the castle-shaped bag reappears, this time perched on a Star Ferry-in front of Singapore's Marina Bay Sands. The captions to these dreamlike images are written in the voices of these personified bags and document their travels around the world.

These pictures were created by Tommy Fung, the artist behind the project SurrealHK, who recently worked with luxury, fashion and lifestyle brands including Gucci, Adidas, Oriental Watch Company, Breitling, Casetify, Johnnie Walker and Martell. Fung, who at the time of writing has 186,000 people following him on Instagram and 52,000 on Facebook so that they can keep up to date with his often darkly humorous Photoshopped works that spotlight newsworthy occurrences or classic Hong Kong scenes, is a dark horse who has successfully brought the worlds of design, pop culture and luxury together.