Kiwis smashing it abroad: The best thing that happened to Christopher Yu was being made redundant

Across borders and industries, New Zealanders are carving out space, building influence and exporting creativity. In this series, RNZ speaks to Kiwis making their mark abroad, those coming home, and those living somewhere in between.

Before Christopher Yu became the co-founder of prestige fragrance houses Colour & Stripe and Ostens — whose clients include the Kardashians and Cate Blanchett — he helped build then-unknown French brand Diptyque into a global name.

Seven years after selling the business, Yu was still fielding calls from fashion royalty: Tom Ford, Karl Lagerfeld and Gucci, all asking for scented candles.

But he didn't always know he'd end up working in luxury fragrance. At 24, Yu followed his friends from Lower Hutt to London with plans to become a tax lawyer. Instead, redundancy — and what he describes as "a very generous cheque" — set him on an entirely different course.

While working part-time at a luxury department store in preparation to return home, he met Laurent Delafon, the founder of Diptyque, who had come in seeking a meeting about stocking his products. Yu, "being Kiwi", asked to see the candles first.

"I always say to people, the best thing that happened in my career was being made redundant," Yu told Afternoons.

By the end of a single coffee-break conversation, Yu had invested his redundancy cheque into what would become one of the defining niche fragrance brands to emerge from France.

"I felt a shift. I felt like, 'why do I like this candle, this perfume in front of me? I don't know anything about this, but I'm excited. I've not felt excited like this for tax law or banking'," he says.

"Did I know that it would end up being my lifelong purpose and passion and what I was good at? Absolutely not at the time."

The luxury fragrance world, Yu notes, is "very homogenised" — but arriving as a Chinese-New Zealander with a thick Kiwi accent and no established lineage may have been an advantage, he says.

"What they remembered was the fact that I was very Kiwi in that I was always asking questions and I was always very curious about what they were doing in a way that Kiwis aren't perceived as a threat."

Over the years, the job delivered its share of celebrity encounters: Annie Lennox singing just centimetres away while he rang up her purchase; personally delivering every fragrance in every size to Elton John as a gift from Sharleen Spiteri. Yet the these are the moments that stay with him.

"The real 'pinch me' moment was the first time I went to Grasse for the harvest and when they pick the roses, et cetera, whatever is in season and getting up super early and being alone for a moment in this field, as all the workers started to assemble and smelling everything and feeling that morning dew at the same time…

"In some ways, they kind of echo the experiences that I had growing up in New Zealand...

"I think your own individual 'pinch me' moments are the ones that you connect with - they'll be different for everybody. And we can sit here and tell celebrity stories, which are funny, but ultimately, it's those moments that I just will never forget."

The realisation that he has spent nearly as much time in Britain as in New Zealand shook him to the core, he says. So he's coming back, "desperately clinging on to my Kiwiness".

While Yu hasn't worked extensively in New Zealand, and some have warned him about the tough economic climate, he's optimistic.

"I'm also really passionate about cultivating a space where, where people who haven't quite yet entered the industry of luxury or fragrance or whatever and encouraging them and building something in New Zealand, because I think we're so well resourced."