My Glück – creating happiness

It was out of love for the place and for each other that Zoe and Abra have chosen to call Keelung their home. Together, with Zoe in charge of design and Abra in charge of marketing, they have built My Glück, their very own design brand. They produce small batches of cloth bags and accessories featuring quirky illustrations revolving around a marine theme.

My Glück is their personal fairy tale, and today I have the pleasure of telling you their story.

Zoe spent many happy childhood summers with her grandparents in a fishing village on Peace Island, Keelung. After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design, she spent several years working in Taipei. But her attachment to her hometown eventually brought her back to Keelung, where she opened a café with her younger sister.  It was in this café that Abra and Zoe met. They met, fell in love, and together they found the courage to chase after Zoe’s dream of having her own design brand.

Growing up by the sea, Zoe has always loved the sea and the life it held.  She holds close to her heart fond memories of the bustling fishing village with all its fishing boats and fishermen, baskets of fish in all colours, shapes and sizes, and the markets raucous with the calls of vendors and shoppers. And these snippets of memories all had one thing in common—they were coloured with the warm pink glow of simple, unrestrained happiness. It is this happiness that Zoe and Abra wanted to incorporate into the core values of My Glück. They wanted their work to bring happiness to people.

As a little girl with only a few colouring pencils, Zoe used to amuse herself for hours on end drawing sea creatures.   Now, Zoe finds herself doing what she loved as a young child on a larger scale. She takes complete creative control of My Glück’s designs, from hatching an idea in her head to finally producing the final design. She has a special spot in her heart for her Stingrays, the main characters of her founding design series.   “I loved watching Stingrays swim,” she mused, “it was as if they were flying through the water. It was like they had all the freedom in the world.”

Unbeknownst to some, research makes up a key element in the design process. Zoe gave her whale shark design as an example. Through her research, she learnt that whale sharks are nicknamed “underwater stars” because the smattering of white spots on their bodies resembled stars in the night sky. With this knowledge, Zoe paid special attention to this defining characteristic when developing her drawings and took extra effort to monitor the printing process to make sure that the spots turned out exactly the way she wanted them to.

Browse My Gluck’s products on Pinkoi and Creema. Their workshop is also open for reservations. Zoe and Abra would love for you to drop in to say hello!

Note: Glück is the German word for happiness and luck. They searched high and low for the perfect name, but the moment they came across the little smiling ü, they knew that their search was over.