From investment banking to bridal fashion, the Central Weddings co-founder can turn her hand to anything, we speak to the down-to-earth mother of three about the secret to her success in love, life, and business
"Do you mind if we take five while I wrap these?” asks Audry Ai-Morrow, springing up from the sofa to tend to a pile of presents. The toys are birthday gifts for friends of her children. With one son and two daughters under the age of 10, her life seems to have become a series of kids’ parties of late. The Morrow pad on The Peak is still festooned with pink balloons from their own daughter’s bash a couple of weeks ago. “We haven’t got around to taking them down yet,” she says as her fingers make quick work of tissue paper and ribbon.
Audry is an A-grade multitasker. In addition to being a mother, the former investment banker is one half of Central Weddings, the go-to bridal boutique for Asia’s most affluent wives-to-be. “It’s a real destination store,” she says of the business she founded with close pal Yolanda Choy-Tang, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. “These days we have so many mainland, Southeast Asian and Taiwanese clients who fly in just to source gowns from us.”
A mix of girl next door, glamour puss and geek, Audry is demure and softly spoken. Born and raised in the quiet town of Westerville, Ohio, she spent 17 years living the simple life in the US Midwest. It was a vastly different upbringing from that of her parents, who were born in Mainland China amid the war and revolutionary chaos of the 1940s.
Both her maternal and paternal grandfathers were generals in Chiang Kai-shek’s army, so, in 1949, just before China closed its borders, they fled to Taiwan, taking her parents with them. Her father’s three sisters, however, failed to get out in time. He wouldn’t see them for 30 years. “I can’t imagine my children having to go through that. I can’t imagine having the strength to run away from the place in which you were born.” Together, her parents emigrated to the US in the 1960s for university and tied the knot shortly after.
As far as her parents were concerned, Westerville was an idyllic spot to raise their children, with its small-town community spirit, open space and opportunity. “My mum was the typical tiger mum. I didn’t need to read the book [Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother] to know that. I played the piano, I was captain of the tennis team, played every sport, did ballet, did voice lessons, was a member of the student government. I was a good, geeky Chinese girl. I always got straight As.”
While her parents relished the quiet life, the bright lights of the big city beckoned their youngest daughter. As soon as she graduated from high school she made a dash for Chicago. Having blitzed maths, she gravitated towards finance subjects at college and was soon snapped up by the now defunct investment bank Bear Stearns. “Not my fault,” she exclaims, throwing her palms in the air, when I mention the bank’s 2008 collapse. “I was a grunt analyst in my first year, doing all the menial work, but I learned a lot from presentation building, prospectuses and financial modelling, which are all skills I still use today at Central Weddings.” She worked long hours. “I think my record was three all-nighters in a row. When you’re young you just do things like that and don’t think twice. Now it takes me two weeks to get over jet lag.”
After almost two years with Bear Stearns in New York, Audry was transferred to Hong Kong. Aside from spending a few summers in Taiwan as a child, she knew little of Asia and had never contemplated moving here. But she revelled in the sultry, smelly, fast-paced atmosphere of her new surrounds. “I think I had so much energy pent up from my childhood in Ohio. I’d developed a really adventurous spirit and constantly wanted to experience new things.” Eighteen months later she began working for a company called Lark, where she oversaw the building of multiplex cinemas on the mainland, and helped develop the online ticketing platforms Cityline and Urbtix.
Meanwhile, one night in Lan Kwai Fong, her good looks drew the attention of a talent scout. She dabbled in modelling on weekends and ended up filming about 10 television commercials. “My bosses had no idea because they never watched Chinese TV or read Chinese magazines, so I led this dual life.”
Read the full story in the October 2015 issue of Hong Kong Tatler
Photography by Raul Docasar
Styling by Justine Lee