While KS Sze & Sons is moving on from its historic location in 2025, its current president, Camille Sze, has grand plans to build a legacy on 101 years of dreams.
Creative direction Gennady Oreshkin and Kate Bolgarova
Photography Kate Bolgarova
Styling Gennady Oreshkin
Make-up Ksenia Ivanova
Hair Annakay Simpson-Upadek
Model Rosemary Ling
Camille Sze was only six years old when, in her grandfather KS Sze’s atelier, she was given a proposition: “If you can draw it, I will make it.”
Looking back, Sze believes it was likely “a gentle form of distraction to keep me from disrupting clients”, but her grandfather kept his word. She drew two pearls at a diagonal, one purple and one pink, with a garnish of diamonds in the shape of a leaf. “It was nothing breakthrough, but I was able to fully savour it as my very own design,” Sze recalls. “A spectrum of coloured freshwater pearls was formally presented to me, of which I was to select two. Then my tiny ring size was taken. And within the span of my summer trip to Hong Kong, my ring was completed.”
Today, KS Sze & Sons is a four-generation, family-run concern that celebrated 101 years in business in 2024. Its boutique within the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong has stood for 61 long years, serving everyone from royalty, diplomats and politicians to celebrities and millionaires – and is notably the longest-running business within the storied hotel. KS, who’d made his name in Shanghai long before he came to Hong Kong, was known to be a man who knew his business, having travelled extensively around the world to understand rare and priceless gemstones. After re-establishing his company in Hong Kong, he quickly built a reputation based on his knowledge and expertise, as well as his honesty, fair prices and exemplary treatment of his customers. 
Camille Sze
But to six-year-old Camille, KS was simply Grandpa – his name and larger-than-life personality were beyond her understanding as a young girl. All of it would come when she was older.
Nonetheless, returning to America with her new pearl ring left her with an unforgettable taste for custom design. Over the years, the Harvard graduate continued creating bespoke jewellery at KS Sze & Sons for close friends – a series of cufflinks, wedding jewellery and countless small-scale pieces. Sze never took her family’s business for granted, but knew it to be a tremendous privilege that she could fully utilise her family traditions and connect to her roots as an American-born Chinese.
Most recently, she’s channelling her love for design into a personal project called Leftovers, which she began after moving back to Hong Kong following the death of her father, Nien Dak Sze, in 2023, to take up the torch and continue the family business. It’s a project that began as a massive dive into researching and studying the items kept in the company’s 101-year-old vault, a process Sze has described as “diving off a cliff and pulling a geographic” as she dealt with the grief of losing her father and the heavy responsibility of continuing her family’s legacy.
“For myself, this journey is far more than a professional gig – it’s a personal journey,” says Sze, who’s President of the company. “Any gem or bead or object within the vaults of KS Sze, I actively studied up close. It wasn’t just to climb the steep learning curve of inexperience but also so that I might gain closeness to my family and the culture in Hong Kong.”
Leftovers was the fond nickname she had for the discoveries she made within the vault, some gemstones so tiny they measured by the millimetre, and the many ways she’s brought archived pieces back to life again through resetting, repurposing and reviving. In fact, one of the best-selling custom pieces for the company in 2023 came out of this concept and was one of her first designs after she returned here.
A range of items found in KS Sze’s vault, from a bespoke pocket watch lined with pearls, and an uncarved block of blue-green jade, to an antique travel-sized gem scale and photographs
“After my father passed away, I discovered among his belongings a David Yurman gunmetal dog tag with black diamonds,” says Sze. “We created a delicate diamond case to envelop the masculine tag, and on the front of the removable diamond case, we wrote out the Chinese characters of my name, Sze Win-yin, with 197 brilliant round diamonds.”
Sze soon discovered there was an appetite for resetting older designs, as many of KS Sze & Sons’ clientele were multigenerational, returning with their parents or grandparents’ jewellery to have it updated for themselves. “We’re restless jewellery lovers, always on the lookout for curious new ideas,” says Sze. “Every design piece our team has developed, I consider an exercise in creative problem solving and the fastest route for me to learn everything I needed to keep designing.”
Perhaps in her journey to discover her family legacy – as well as her own self – Sze has found that it’s never too late to reset. As she sits and resets heirlooms into modern, more wearable pieces, she’s left wondering what KS Sze & Sons would look like under her leadership. The wheels are already turning. At the end of December, KS Sze & Sons will leave the Mandarin Oriental in favour of a private showroom on Ice House Street, where the company will continue to serve its clients while she contemplates an overhaul of the brand.
She has big dreams about relaunching the brand with a vastly altered business model but she isn’t wiping the slate clean. God no.
“The KS Sze badge means something to us and we’ll work to protect it,” she declares. “But we follow a great rule of jewellery design in our move from the Mandarin Oriental. Even after 101 years: Never. Be. Afraid. To. Reset.”
Model wears the Starry Night 2024 collection. Bustier, Szman
In KS Sze & Sons’ long history, change has had its rewards. Sze checks them off her list: “We were founded in Shanghai, but we leapt into Hong Kong. We had a booth, then we leapt into an unbuilt hotel. During the ’90s and early 2000s, we expanded into several markets beyond Hong Kong and held trunk shows across America.”
Her father was also unafraid to expand the business in new ways. “For his globetrotting clientele, KS Sze & Sons helped bring in brands like Vhernier of Milan and Fabergé of the UK to Hong Kong. We were never afraid to offer curiosity and change to the showroom, and my father also welcomed up-and-coming talents and world-famous jewellers, from Sarah Ho of London to the legendary Kai-Yin Lo,” says Sze.
And as Sze learns the ropes of the business, she grows more confident than ever that she has the ambition and the ability to refresh the KS Sze & Sons name and pave the way so that the brand shines for at least another 101 years. She’s been itching to change and views the company’s imminent departure from the hotel – she says it’s “an intentional disruption that permits a deserved pause to our day-to-day model” – as the first step. Her mother, the company’s chairperson, has given her blessing.
“Over the past two years, I’ve often asked myself, ‘What would Grandpa do?’ ‘What would Auntie Stephanie do?’ ‘What would my dad do?’ All three presidents of KS Sze & Sons had strong-minded approaches to carrying the torch. The one I’m certain led the most powerful example was my grandfather,” says Sze. “What’s the phrase? Always follow the founder. And so I do.”
We follow a great rule of jewellery design in our move … Even after 101 years: Never. Be. Afraid. To reset.
Camille Sze
KS Sze had strong beliefs, guiding principles that have ensured the success and the legacy of his namesake brand. And if six-year-old Camille was at the time too young to grasp this, she does now. Completely. “He was true to his word. I drew a ring. He made that ring,” she says. “Being true to his word was one of the undeniable principles behind my Grandfather’s early and sustained success. In the bustling free-port economy of Hong Kong, social and transactional trust were one and the same.”
Her grandfather also instilled in his family and team the need to treat clients as family, and in the 61 years that KS Sze & Sons has operated out of the Mandarin Oriental, the company worked hard to forge long-lasting bonds with everyone who came through, whether they were locals, hotel guests, or even “tourists on cruise ships stopping in port for 24-hour stays. We’re grateful for hotel guests who pass through as strangers and leave as friends we know we’ll keep in touch with for years to come,” says Sze. “If there’s any special sauce behind the longevity of KS Sze & Sons, it’s the magic of friendship that comes with our jewels.”
The secret sauce – understanding the client-muse when they come into their shop looking for a custom design. KS Sze & Sons upholds its promise that each custom design is unique, fine-tuned for the client and their muse. “What’s a muse? It’s a specific individual who’s granted us permission to design jewellery with their life front and centre in our design minds,” Sze explains. “This muse-collaborator has always been the pride and joy of KS Sze’s client friendships. He lived to make jewellery around the life and story of his clients.” In the early days of custom design in Hong Kong, it was a form of luxury. Hotel guests, from Princess Diana to Barbara Walters, and Charlie Chaplin to IM Pei, all partook in this luxury experience of personal service and personalisation with KS Sze himself.
Model wears the Starry Night 2024 collection. Bustier, Szman
KS wasn’t a flashy designer, favouring fundamentals over fashion. “My grandfather wasn’t the type to over-design his jewellery,” says Sze. “He was known as a gentle jeweller with an outstanding empathy for comfort in mind. And I remain a firm believer of my grandfather’s principles.”
With all this in mind, Sze went back to the drawing table, picked up a pencil and drew away. Her first instinct was to pay tribute to her grandfather. He designed all his life for other people, so perhaps it was about time someone designed for him. Sze’s starting point was Kam Sing, the Chinese name of the brand that means “gold star”. All generations of the Sze family were encouraged to look up, to “star-gaze”, discover their own ways and pursue their own dreams. And if ever there was a time to dream, for Sze it was now.
The Starry Night 2024 Collection was the first full collection by KS Sze & Sons in a decade, and a deeply personal offering from Sze to honour her grandfather and the brand’s name, Kam Sing. Set in rose gold, white multi-shaped diamonds are angled and scattered along the band to mimic a night sky full of stars, or clustered and scintillating like shooting stars. It’s extremely modern and timeless at the same time, there’s a range of ear huggies, and the rings and bangles are beautifully stackable.
Starry Night 2024, designed by KS Sze & Sons, is the brand’s first full collection in a decade
Choosing to leave the Mandarin Oriental in 2025 isn’t goodbye; rather, the Starry Night collection presents a new beginning. Sze declares she’s in full “start-up mode”, working towards a new model for KS Sze & Sons that “deserves to exist.
“For just about any heritage brand, the requisite is to adapt and change without sacrificing founding principles,” she says. “For the coming year, we’re committed to serving our clients on a more personal, direct private-sales basis and through online channels. There’s plenty of work to do to reach our potential. And after 61 years at the Mandarin Oriental, we leave knowing we have the support of our loyal clientele. We leave with the utmost gratitude for the very long and storied history we share with the hotel and its very familiar faces, and we leave with the understanding that we remain neighbours and friends, and that we leave in pursuit of change.” But before they do, they’re going to have their biggest holiday season yet at the Mandarin Oriental.
Where one door closes, another opens. And what does her mother think of it all? “She’ll likely echo in sentiment all of the above, but with simpler articulation. What’s next? Watch this spot.”