Saltwater and eucalyptus. The familiar smells of a childhood spent in Western Australia drifted off the Indian Ocean to greet Ken Leung and his family as they stepped out of hotel quarantine in early 2021. The creative director, who was born in Malaysia but raised in Perth, had returned to Australia after 18 years abroad. The move wasn’t exactly planned. Leung, who was working as the global creative director for Uniqlo, came home to renew his visa, and had every intention of returning to the US. “Coming home, seeing family … we realised how much we missed it,” he says.
After relaxing back into the Perth lifestyle – morning walks on the beach, brunch meetings, relishing the mental clarity that physical space brings – Leung realised he hadn’t just returned Down Under. He’d arrived at home.
“I’ve always based my life around work, and I’ve worked in some pretty amazing places – Paris, Tokyo, Bhutan, Marrakech, Cape Town … But working back home is exciting to me, because I have a relationship with the landscape and the people here that I don’t really have elsewhere.”
He returns to the moment he left hotel quarantine. “I literally stepped outside and hugged a gum tree,” the creative director says laughing. “Smelling the air for the first time, it took me back to when I was a kid. That’s what gets me excited. That’s what I want to capture in
