There is a glow to Georgina Wilson that arrives before anything else – she laughs easily, speaks with a directness that comes from years of knowing exactly who she is. We meet her at the Island Shangri-La, a choice that turns out to be more than logistical: her parents were the first couple to marry here, and it remains a place she loves returning to. ‘Hong Kong will always be home to us,’ she says, glancing around the room with something close to affection. ‘Whenever we get the chance to stay at the Island Shangri-La, it’s always yes.’ It is a small detail, but a telling one, because this is how Georgina operates: everything is intentional. Everything carries meaning.
It is International Women’s Month, and also Art Month in Hong Kong – a convergence that feels fitting for a woman who has spent the better part of a decade building something that is at once creative vision and commercial force. Sunnies, the lifestyle brand she co-founded in the Philippines, began as an eyewear label before steadily, purposefully expanding into something far broader: cafés, beauty, and a community of loyal consumers who live inside the world it has made its own. Mainland China and Bangkok came next, and Asia, she says without hesitation, is the dream.
‘I can’t really think of a market where Sunnies doesn’t suit,’ she says. ‘Asia is not where the future is. Asia is right now.’
Jewellery: Nara Fine Jewellery
Sunglasses: Sunnies Studios
Luggage: SIGNICIA
Shoes: Paris Texas via Net-a-Porter
What is striking about Georgina is how little of her success reads as accidental. Asked when she realised she was building something bigger than a sunglasses brand, she doesn’t hesitate. ‘We always saw it as that,’ she says simply. ‘We always envisioned it as a lifestyle brand. We wanted to create a universe around it – not necessarily knowing yet what products would live within it.’
That clarity extends to Sunnies’ most foundational promise: quality at an accessible price point. The brand has built its identity around a particular kind of alchemy – the aspirational made attainable. ‘Any new product we make, we make sure it has to be the best quality product humanly possible for that price point,’ she says. ‘Even if people say it’s not possible, we make it happen.’ Every new category they enter, every new market they open in, returns to the same question: does it hold the promise? Does it still feel like Sunnies? ‘That’s the sweet spot,’ she says. And she means it. It is the principle the entire enterprise is built around.
Jewellery: Nara Fine Jewellery
Shoes: Paris Texas via Net-a-Porter
When Sunnies opened in Bangkok, she didn’t just see a new market – she saw a mirror. ‘I love Thai culture. I love the energy of the city,’ she says. ‘And I just felt like the brand is perfect for Thailand because it really resonates with that spirit.’ Thai audiences embraced the brand almost as if it were their own. ‘It felt surreal to see Thai people shopping in our brand.’ She pauses, and for a moment the founder steps back and something softer takes her place – a woman visibly moved by the idea that something she built in Manila could feel at home in Bangkok. ‘That’s really, really cool to see.’
New markets are evaluated not just on demographics or footfall, but on alignment – on whether the spirit of the place and the spirit of the brand are in conversation. ‘We look for it to fit culturally,’ she says. The next frontier is apparent: Asia remains the priority, not because it is the safe bet, but because it is where she believes the energy is – and where, for the last ten years, she has been proven right.
Belt: Sportmax
Jewellery: Nara Fine Jewellery
Watch: Emporio Armani
Luggage: SIGNICIA
Shoes: Paris Texas via Net-a-Porter
The conversation turns to what it actually means to do all of this as a woman – as a mother, a founder, a public figure, a person. Georgina does not reach for the comfortable answer. She has no interest in the polished version of this story. Instead, she reaches for the real one.
‘When you become a mother, you really realise that your time is the most precious asset you have,’ she says. ‘If anything takes away from the time of your children, it has to be 100% worth it.’ She describes getting on flights for single-day trips, making calculations that other people might find exhausting – but that, for her, feel like the natural expression of knowing what matters. ‘Sometimes I get on a flight and I just stay for the day or overnight so I can rush back to my kids.’
She is clear-eyed about the mythology of balance – and equally firm in her refusal to perform it. ‘I don’t think anything is ever perfectly balanced,’ she says. ‘You just do the best you can with what you’re doing at any given point, and you give 100% to that.’ It is a grounding position in a culture that still expects women to justify the things they prioritise. Georgina, it becomes clear, is not in the business of justifying herself.
Jewellery: Nara Fine Jewellery
She references a Chinese saying she loves – women hold up half the sky – and then, without missing a beat, adds: ‘Sometimes I feel like we each hold up more.’ She says it with the pride of someone who has held her share and never once considered putting it down.
On the subject of ‘mum guilt’ – that particularly persistent fiction designed to make women feel perpetually insufficient – she does not waver for a second. ‘No one should give that to anyone,’ she says. It is the answer of a woman who has made her choices clearly and consciously, and who stands behind them without looking back.
Jewellery: Nara Fine Jewellery
Headwear: Alexandre Zouari
Shoes: Oleah Handcrafted
What does modern womanhood look like in 2026? She does not pause to consider the question – she has, it seems, already lived the answer. ‘She can really have it all,’ she says. ‘You can have an amazing social life, a business, fun, a family, time to yourself.’ She is not naïve about the difficulty of this – she has simply decided that difficulty is not the same as impossibility.
The story of her life, told honestly, is not one of trade-offs. It is a story of choices – made without apology, without performance, and without the particular exhaustion that comes from trying to make every decision look effortless.
This is, perhaps, what makes her such a precise embodiment of what International Women’s Month is actually meant to honour: not perfection, not the appearance of having figured it all out, but the daily commitment to living a life that is genuinely, specifically, unapologetically yours.
Jewellery: Nara Fine Jewellery
Sunglasses: Sunnies Studios
Ten, twenty years from now, what does she want Sunnies to mean to the women who wear it? She does not hesitate. ‘I want it to mean something. Where you feel good about yourself. That’s the most important thing.’ She talks about watching people interact with the products – the way something shifts when someone puts on a pair of sunglasses, walks into a Studio, or picks up a beauty product that was made with them specifically in mind. ‘I see that when people use the products, they feel like their best selves. Male or female.’ It is, at its core, what she has always been building toward: not just a brand, but a feeling. An act of choosing yourself.
‘I’d love for Sunnies to be a place where people come to enjoy with their friends and family,’ she adds. ‘It’s a product that lives with you, through every walk of life and every moment in your life.’ There is something almost philosophical in this – the idea that a lifestyle brand can be a companion, that the things we surround ourselves with are not incidental to who we are, but part of how we build the life we want to be living.
Jewellery: Nara Fine Jewellery
She has always known what she was building. She knew it in the early days, when the shape of it was not yet fully visible, and she knows it now, in the lobby of a hotel where her family’s story began, looking out at a city that still feels like home.
The world is simply, finally, catching up.
Catherine Pun
A Hong Kong native with Filipino-Chinese roots, Catherine infuses every part of her life with zest, whether she’s belting out karaoke tunes or exploring off-the-beaten-path destinations. Her downtime often includes unwinding with Netflix and indulging in a 10-step skincare routine. As the Editorial Director of Friday Club., Catherine brings her wealth of experience from major publishing houses, where she refined her craft and even authored a book. Her sharp editorial insight makes her a dynamic force, always on the lookout for the next compelling narrative.
