China’s pioneering Eastern artistic fragrance brand, To Summer, has unveiled its first Hong Kong store at 52 Yun Ping Road. Though it opened in September 2025, we finally went “To Summer Causeway Bay,” which marks the brand’s first step beyond the mainland, following 15 stores across eight cities. More than a retail space, it embodies the brand’s signature “One Store, One Story” philosophy, translating local culture into immersive olfactory and aesthetic experiences.
A quick recap, founded in Beijing in 2018, To Summer draws inspiration from the mountains, rivers, poetry, books, and paintings of the Orient. It collaborates with world-renowned perfumers and a leading fragrance house with over 170 years of expertise to craft pure, advanced Eastern botanical scents. The brand reinterprets traditional Eastern wisdom through contemporary lenses, creating art perfumes, home fragrances, and body care that feel both timeless and deeply personal. Its “local culture translation” approach revives historic architecture, turning each store into a narrative vessel of “New Life from Old Soil.”
For Hong Kong, To Summer honours the unsung women of the 1960s manufacturing golden era. As the city industrialised, women stepped away from homes into factories, offices, and storefronts, thereby shaping textiles, plastics, printing, and publishing with their hands. These “invisible hands” built Hong Kong’s backbone. The Causeway Bay store, housed in a 1958 shophouse with original mosaic tiles, rekindles that legacy. It pays tribute to their resilience, transforming memories of labor and craftsmanship into a sensory journey of Eastern beauty and local pride.
Stepping inside feels like entering a living scrapbook. The space divides into four poetic zones: the Eastern Ingredients Studio, Changwu Pavilion, Study Room, and Bathroom.
In the Eastern Ingredients Studio, visitors can view rare raw materials and essential oils displayed like an olfactory exhibition. Vintage cameras and archival images from the brand’s city journal sit beside shelves of botanical records and perfumers’ notes. Fine mosaic floors from the building’s origins soften the urban bustle, while a dense bookshelf evokes the era when Hong Kong women balanced books and tools. Here, the scent journey begins; a time-honoured greeting rooted in Eastern ingredients.
Turning left, the Changwu Pavilion offers a serene pause. Collaborating with renowned Hong Kong designer Alan Chan, To Summer infuses the space with “Made in Hong Kong” details: echoes of Hakka “Hard-on-Hard” metalworking, silks from Sham Shui Po, and movable type stamps. Floral note cards and furoshiki wrapping cloths, designed with local sentiment, celebrate craftsmanship. Guests can sip kombucha, pen notes, stamp, and wrap by hand, reconnecting with simplicity amid the city’s pace.
Lifting a beaded curtain reveals the Study Room, a quiet sanctuary of rare books and archival volumes on Hong Kong’s women and craft history. It traces the city’s East-meets-West elegance and pays tribute to female writers’ unrestrained thoughts, preserving emotional ties to streets and shops.
The Bathroom, inspired by women’s grooming rituals, presents bath and body collections in a timeless, serene atmosphere, completing a multidimensional expression of contemporary Eastern beauty.
Signature fragrances anchor the experience. Void evokes Chinese tea rituals and Eastern philosophy with bergamot, sage, mate, Sri Lankan tea, jasmine, rose, amber, and musk—delivering clarity and stillness. Cedarwood (a personal favourite), captures the Kunlun Mountains’ essence: bergamot, juniper, cypress, rose, jasmine, Atlas and Chinese cedarwood, guaiac wood, and pine, offering a profound, embracing woody depth. Nude feels like a pure second skin; cotton accord, pear, magnolia, waterlily, violet, ambrette, ambergris, and amber. Embodying the ethos natural self-love. Her, created with perfumer Véronique Nyberg, blends fo shou, mandarin, rosemary, narcissus, calamus, orris, white musk, fir balsam, and vetiver. Bold yet gentle, it celebrates the untamed complexity of modern women.
Beyond fragrance, culture takes center stage through “Wandering Her City,” a special journal and city guide. Written in the first person, it invites readers on two curated walking routes exploring women’s craftsmanship and cultural spaces. Discover Ho Sau Mei, Hong Kong’s sole female master of hand-carved mahjong with over 70 years of expertise; Chan Chau Fung preserving letterpress traditions at Chan Man Carving Workshop; and elder seamstresses in Po Ling Arcade threading generational resilience. Cultural stops include Lily Bookshop’s teak shelves, The Shophouse gallery’s textured spaces, and Asia Art Archive’s knowledge constellation. The journal traces footsteps of literary figures like Eileen Chang and Xiao Hong, reconstructing Hong Kong as a “Her City” of self-possessed lives and hidden ateliers.
To Summer’s Causeway Bay store aspires to be more than retail - it is a cultural translator. It merges Eastern aesthetics with Hong Kong’s industrious soul, proving fragrance can preserve memory, honour labour, and spark connection. As co-founder Shen Li has noted, scent becomes a profound way to safeguard stories and invite reflection in a fast-moving world.
With this milestone, To Summer positions Hong Kong as a gateway for global expansion while deepening its commitment to inclusive, experiential Oriental beauty. One hopes that visitors leave not just with a bottle of scent, but with a renewed appreciation for the hands that shaped a city, and the quiet elegance of Eastern fragrance that now carries those stories forward.
In Causeway Bay’s vibrant streets, To Summer invites you to wander, breathe, and remember: every era saves a seat for its women, and every scent can honour the city of her making.
For Hong Kong, To Summer honours the unsung women of the 1960s manufacturing golden era. As the city industrialised, women stepped away from homes into factories, offices, and storefronts, thereby shaping textiles, plastics, printing, and publishing with their hands. These “invisible hands” built Hong Kong’s backbone. The Causeway Bay store, housed in a 1958 shophouse with original mosaic tiles, rekindles that legacy. It pays tribute to their resilience, transforming memories of labor and craftsmanship into a sensory journey of Eastern beauty and local pride.
Stepping inside feels like entering a living scrapbook. The space divides into four poetic zones: the Eastern Ingredients Studio, Changwu Pavilion, Study Room, and Bathroom.
In the Eastern Ingredients Studio, visitors can view rare raw materials and essential oils displayed like an olfactory exhibition. Vintage cameras and archival images from the brand’s city journal sit beside shelves of botanical records and perfumers’ notes. Fine mosaic floors from the building’s origins soften the urban bustle, while a dense bookshelf evokes the era when Hong Kong women balanced books and tools. Here, the scent journey begins; a time-honoured greeting rooted in Eastern ingredients.
Turning left, the Changwu Pavilion offers a serene pause. Collaborating with renowned Hong Kong designer Alan Chan, To Summer infuses the space with “Made in Hong Kong” details: echoes of Hakka “Hard-on-Hard” metalworking, silks from Sham Shui Po, and movable type stamps. Floral note cards and furoshiki wrapping cloths, designed with local sentiment, celebrate craftsmanship. Guests can sip kombucha, pen notes, stamp, and wrap by hand, reconnecting with simplicity amid the city’s pace.
Lifting a beaded curtain reveals the Study Room, a quiet sanctuary of rare books and archival volumes on Hong Kong’s women and craft history. It traces the city’s East-meets-West elegance and pays tribute to female writers’ unrestrained thoughts, preserving emotional ties to streets and shops.
The Bathroom, inspired by women’s grooming rituals, presents bath and body collections in a timeless, serene atmosphere, completing a multidimensional expression of contemporary Eastern beauty.
Signature fragrances anchor the experience. Void evokes Chinese tea rituals and Eastern philosophy with bergamot, sage, mate, Sri Lankan tea, jasmine, rose, amber, and musk—delivering clarity and stillness. Cedarwood (a personal favourite), captures the Kunlun Mountains’ essence: bergamot, juniper, cypress, rose, jasmine, Atlas and Chinese cedarwood, guaiac wood, and pine, offering a profound, embracing woody depth. Nude feels like a pure second skin; cotton accord, pear, magnolia, waterlily, violet, ambrette, ambergris, and amber. Embodying the ethos natural self-love. Her, created with perfumer Véronique Nyberg, blends fo shou, mandarin, rosemary, narcissus, calamus, orris, white musk, fir balsam, and vetiver. Bold yet gentle, it celebrates the untamed complexity of modern women.
Beyond fragrance, culture takes center stage through “Wandering Her City,” a special journal and city guide. Written in the first person, it invites readers on two curated walking routes exploring women’s craftsmanship and cultural spaces. Discover Ho Sau Mei, Hong Kong’s sole female master of hand-carved mahjong with over 70 years of expertise; Chan Chau Fung preserving letterpress traditions at Chan Man Carving Workshop; and elder seamstresses in Po Ling Arcade threading generational resilience. Cultural stops include Lily Bookshop’s teak shelves, The Shophouse gallery’s textured spaces, and Asia Art Archive’s knowledge constellation. The journal traces footsteps of literary figures like Eileen Chang and Xiao Hong, reconstructing Hong Kong as a “Her City” of self-possessed lives and hidden ateliers.
To Summer’s Causeway Bay store aspires to be more than retail - it is a cultural translator. It merges Eastern aesthetics with Hong Kong’s industrious soul, proving fragrance can preserve memory, honour labour, and spark connection. As co-founder Shen Li has noted, scent becomes a profound way to safeguard stories and invite reflection in a fast-moving world.
With this milestone, To Summer positions Hong Kong as a gateway for global expansion while deepening its commitment to inclusive, experiential Oriental beauty. One hopes that visitors leave not just with a bottle of scent, but with a renewed appreciation for the hands that shaped a city, and the quiet elegance of Eastern fragrance that now carries those stories forward.
In Causeway Bay’s vibrant streets, To Summer invites you to wander, breathe, and remember: every era saves a seat for its women, and every scent can honour the city of her making.
