SINGAPORE - A fashion renaissance staged by Generation Z has taken the local streetwear scene by storm.

Defined by experimentation and eclecticism, the prolonged pandemic ushered in many hand-stitched, independent fashion labels from student creators aged under 25.

Amid the rise of the gig economy, these Gen Z home-grown businesses have expanded exponentially online, winning fans here and abroad.

Meet five young and social media-savvy entrepreneurs with a passion for threads, who kept their creative spark alive during lockdown by launching exclusive collections and bespoke pieces.

1. Plop Apparels

Ms Jermaine Ho, 24, sunk in her life savings to start Plop Apparels at a 517 sq ft space in Haji Lane in July 2022. Her goal: To diversify local streetwear options.

While she was still enrolled in polytechnic in 2019, she began curating vintage clothing which she resold on Instagram. She then took a two-year “gap year” to grow her business.

She is now in her final year studying business management at the Singapore Institute of Management. 

Unlike mass-market labels, she does not want her apparel, priced from $20 to $200, to be impulse buys.

“I curate pieces that align with Plop’s image, one that is timeless, something you can wear on a daily basis. We stand for creativity and hope to work with smaller creators and brands which want to promote their original designs,” she says.

Plop sells a range of androgynous-style clothing and accessories that cater to 18- to 30-year-olds.

To date, the store has 42,400 followers on Instagram, from as far as the United States and South Korea.

It also curates independent brands from Thailand, Vietnam and the United Kingdom. 

Ms Ho credits social media with facilitating the collaborative aspect between emerging alternative fashion labels worldwide.

“I am very grateful to have these labels reach back to me over direct messages on Instagram,” she says.

Alongside curating apparel, the avid cafegoer, who was inspired by online platforms TikTok and Pinterest to pursue fashion seriously, also designs her own clothes occasionally.

Sustainability and conscious buying are non-negotiable for her.

She recently rejected a lucrative deal with a fast-fashion giant because it was accused of copying the designs of smaller, independent designers.

“The ethics behind its mass production did not align with Plop’s values,” she says.

It is a struggle to break even in sales and foot rental costs of up to $13,000 a month, especially when she had to pay to repair a faulty pipe in her shop recently.

 “My mother initially thought I was spending too much time on the brand for too little returns,” she says.

But Ms Ho is pressing on with her passion project, alongside her studies.

“By giving smaller creators a platform to showcase their designs, we can show that Singapore is also a place of emerging creators. Perhaps, more people will consider us as a fashion hub.” 

2. String Of Kisses

While many of her peers staved off pandemic blues by doom-scrolling the Internet, 21-year-old Singaporean Jewel Chin used the two years to stitch together a fashion empire – from crochet.

While waiting to be admitted to university in 2021, she taught herself the craft through tutorials on YouTube. It started as a creative outlet when she was cooped up at home after finishing her A levels at Anderson Serangoon Junior College.

Her new-found hobby involved threading together spaghetti-strap crop tops, which she documented on Instagram. Her posts went viral.

Before long, the younger of two siblings received a deluge of direct messages on Instagram asking if she would accept orders.

In July 2022, she opened a shop on Big Cartel, an online store that helps artists and makers sell their wares.

Called String Of Kisses, her shop boasts a 35,000-strong following on Instagram. To date, she has been featured in Vogue Singapore, Female Singapore and Pap, an indie fashion magazine based in Milan.

Her leg warmers (priced from US$180 to US$250 or S$240 to S$340), mesh shrugs (US$125 to US$145) and a grungy top named Ugly Star Tank (US$180), assembled in her bedroom in her Housing Board flat, have made their way in parcels to the US.

She caters to the aficionado market of crochet enthusiasts, including consumers of alternative fashion who do not mind paying more for custom pieces using specific colours, yarns and sizing.

Her bespoke items are priced from US$150 to US$250. She sells about six pieces a month, chalking up “four figures in sales” on good months.

Ms Chin, who registered her business as a sole proprietorship in May, believes that the prices reflect her time costs. Each piece typically takes eight to 15 hours to complete. She has also recruited two crafters online, who help with custom orders.

The flame-haired entrepreneur, who models her own works and manages the brand’s social media, says: “My orders are not consistent and usually correlate with how active I am on Instagram. This fluctuates a lot since I’m still studying.”

Her conceptual process, characterised by “spontaneity and impulsivity,” is inspired by streetwear on video-sharing platform TikTok. It deploys earth-toned yarns of gossamer and woolly textures to accentuate to organic feel of handmade clothing.

Her funkiest moments of improvisation have produced fishnet tops with distressed ends, spider web-like mesh sleeves and asymmetrical patchwork skirts integrating ruffles and net stitches.

The third-year data science and artificial intelligence student at Nanyang Technological University says growing her business and working towards her degree at the same time is an energy-intensive juggle.

With the advent of fast-fashion monoliths such as Shein, staying ahead of trends means relentless innovation, such that her desire to create timeless pieces is countered by the need to follow micro-trends to stay relevant.

“Crochet is slow fashion as I release only a few pieces at a time. This definitely sets independent brands apart from mass-market labels.

“I believe that a piece is more valued when it is handmade and produced ethically with minimal wastage and in small batches.

“Independent labels provide an opportunity for Gen Zs to prioritise quality, take a stand against fast-fashion’s mass production and resist consumerism,” says the designer, who dresses in her own togs and other locally curated vintage thrift shop labels, such as Plop Apparels and re.drmg in Haji Lane.

But Ms Chin laments that the market for alternative fashion in Singapore has been lukewarm at best.

Most of her customers come from overseas, especially the US.

The popularity of String Of Kisses remains something “scary and foreign” to the self-proclaimed introvert, who found taking Zoom calls with overseas clients “nerve-racking” at first.

“Conversations were quite painful for me. I did come out of my shell eventually,” she adds.

She attributes her online success to the Instagram algorithm, which analyses content and promotes it on discovery pages for users with similar interests.

“Crochet and knit designers who started a generation ago wouldn’t have had the spike reach that Instagram and websites that sell small designer items such as Etsy have, especially in this generation.

“I’m grateful for creators who help make this craft accessible to more people, and I hope to be one of them in the future,” she says.

It is still early days for her as she continues to hone her craft and has yet to decide if String Of Kisses will be more than a side hustle.

“I am still focusing on university at the moment. Getting my degree is still of utmost importance,” she says.

3. Epic

Cool is the word that comes to mind when describing 21-year-old Donna Chua’s online fashion brand Epic. It goes by the handle @ep1cgirl on Instagram and is distinctive for its aloof-looking models, eccentric strikes of colour and free-hand designs defined by bold, visual statements.

She launched her company in June 2020 during her final year of International Baccalaureate (IB) examinations at the School of the Arts Singapore.

In 2019, when she was 17 and a visual arts student, she ran online shops that resold trendy clothes curated from e-commerce marketplace Taobao. It was during the circuit breaker period that she decided to pursue fashion design as a pastime to regain a sense of fun and agency.

She says: “I’ve always been very passionate about fashion, and it has been my dream since I was 16 to create clothes.”

She launched Epic on Instagram with the goal of introducing new styles to the Singaporean youth fashion scene, which she felt was too homogenous.

Her first collection included spray-painted and airbrushed hoodies and sweatpants, which she sold for $20 to $50. Anatomies of sea creatures, visualisations of spiritual auras, cyber sigils derived from tattoo art which she had seen on Pinterest were among the eclectic mix of aesthetics she inked onto her outfits.

“I started getting into airbrushed and spray-painted streetwear styles which, to my knowledge, couldn’t be found in Singapore,” says the avid photographer and fitness enthusiast.

Drawn to pop culture and an “aggressive” graffiti-style aesthetic, her airbrush techniques were self-taught and inspired by overseas artists and independent American streetwear brands such as Plagueround.

Epic, which has almost 3,000 followers, caters mainly to customers aged 18 to 24 locally and has been shipped to fans in Australia, Canada and Taiwan. The price of the apparel ranges up to $215 for a custom design such as a nature-themed hoodie or a hand-painted bodysuit. She sells up to 40 pieces in a good month, yielding sales of up to $2,500.

Now 21 and a computer science major at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Ms Chua says exclusivity – or catering to people who understand her aesthetic appeal – remains her business strategy.

She notes that being transparent about her creative process, such as filming how a product is created and posting the video on Instagram, has helped her brand gain credibility.

“I want to show that this is not a faceless brand. Someone is behind the label and puts her heart into the work. While I source my blank clothing pieces from e-commerce platforms like Alibaba, I think my brand still promotes conscious buying due to the higher price points,” says the younger of two children of a retired semiconductor industry general manager and a fintech business owner.

She stays in a residential hall at NTU, where she juggles course work and commerce by carving out time for each.

“I prefer not to mix school with business. Before every pop-up or batch release, I will block out three days entirely for Epic,” she says. A typical three-day production run includes cyanotype printing in her dormitory room, which involves inking multiple layers of stencils onto clothing.

“I make many runs in and out of my room to let the ink dry in the sun,” she says, a sight that her hall mates are now used to. “For now, I get my boyfriend to help with the manual labour,” she quips about her sole unpaid labour source.

In 2022, she launched a Black Hole Top, a shirt inspired by her own experience with depression. It features a smoky, dark airbrushed crop top with a black orb in its centre, and retails for $45 online.

“The imagery of a dark void reflected my headspace back when I first started university and was overwhelmed by academia. I was also interested in galaxy-inspired imagery at that time and integrated this into Black Hole,” she says.

To pay the bills, she intends to take on a job in User Experience design after she graduates, while tending to her business on the side.

How will she know she has made it?

“When celebrity icons I look up to wear my creations or when my craft is appreciated enough to sustain a full-time job,” says Ms Chua, who counts American singer-rappers Doja Cat and Rico Nasty among her muses.

But her ultimate goal is to make Singapore Gen Z street style “more expressive and diverse” over the years. “I hope this inspires more kids to bring newer designs to an international stage in the future.”

4. Unbiased

A sewing machine borrowed from her sister was all Ms Denyse Oh needed to get operations running for her bespoke fashion label when she was 18. The self-taught seamstress, who was frustrated with ill-fitting clothes and synthetic fabrics, launched her label Unbiased in May 2020.

The polytechnic student started out with sketched reiterations of fashion designs she had seen online. After a successful experience recreating a skirt from New York-based luxury womenswear brand Orseund Iris using an old skirt from home, Ms Oh decided to try illustrating her own original designs. 

While at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, she was introduced to Clo3D, a 3D fashion design software programme that creates virtual prototypes of fashion designs using simulation technology.

One of her first creations designed on the software was the Memories Dress, an understated black evening dress with a plunging back line. She posted a virtual prototype of the dress worn by a blank avatar on her Instagram page. She had not even drafted a physical copy of the dress, much less sewed it, when it started receiving love and attention in the comment section.

She says: “What made my Memories Dress iconic was that no human was in the dress. Fashion labels in Singapore had not really used a software to market a fashion label yet, and I thought this was a good, untapped market to explore.”

The 21-year-old, who graduated with a Business Studies with Entrepreneurship and Business Digitalisation diploma in 2022, recounts: “The software helped me gain market feedback even before the dress was launched.”

She recalls the adrenaline rush of sewing clothes through the night and getting up early the next morning for lectures while in polytechnic. Her mother, a senior sales manager, would chide her to get some sleep.

“In my last few semesters of school, I was studying remotely at home and sewing in between breaks,” she says, adding that she graduated with a “very average” grade point average of around 3.4.

“There’s an assumption that without intensive capital, it is hard to start a fashion business. Yet, independent businesses like mine, which release smaller batches, have the benefit of trial and error and experimenting,” she says.

Contrary to the revenue-centric bulk tactics of other businesses, most of Unbiased’s apparel, which is sold online on Instagram and a website on Shopify, are “made-to-order” pieces which Ms Oh sews at home, with fabric sourced from a supplier in Balestier.

Each bespoke dress takes about two hours to make, while her four in-stock design pieces are manufactured by a small factory in Indonesia, which produces up to 25 pieces a design. Sales come up to about $2,000 a month.

Ms Oh’s designs are characterised by head-turning, slinky backless dresses, such as the Stranger In Red Dress (about $189), that are aimed at accentuating the female figure – a provocative foray in an Asian market she describes as ”conservative”.

“I don’t expect most of Singapore to be receptive to my brand, which caters to a super-niche community. My customers embody a certain lifestyle and attitude – that of empowerment, confidence and ambition. If I didn’t buckle down on the exclusive factor and people I wanted to target, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

Her ultimate aspiration? To convince people that Singaporean fashion is “not bad” at all.

“In 2020, the fashion scene was mostly ruled by blogshops,” she says, explaining that she has never been inclined towards “corporate and conservative” styles. “So I decided to make pieces that were more risque and feminine.”

“I’m not the type to jump on trends. If I want my pieces to be timeless, why then should I try to push out clothes that are trendy? I intentionally keep my batches small as producing for trends would be counterproductive.

“I hope to create something that fits well and can last through time. I hope my clothes may one day be passed down the generations. Sustainability boils down to longevity and investing in good fabrics and materials assure that.”

Today, she assesses that the state of Singaporean fashion is much improved, compared with before the Covid-19 pandemic. “The popping up of independent labels has helped to diversify and revolutionise the way Generation Z dresses,” she says.

She believes that alternative fashion for Generation Z is distinct for its nostalgic combination of past eras of fashion and experimentation with new, unconventional fabrics. “Gen Z designers are combining vintage elements with modern, contemporary shapes, such as the Victorian corset design,” she says, adding that the corset is seeing a revival today.

Since February 2023, she has been working as a customer success executive, keeping her fashion design to nights and weekends. She has no plans to further her education and hopes to make Unbiased her full-time job within the next three years.

Having learnt digitalisation in marketing has enabled her to embrace the possibilities of using technology, such as artificial intelligence software, to advance her business.

She hopes to see her brand work its way to an international stage. “Social media has made fashion more collaborative as creators can glean from one another’s ideas while implementing their personal flair. For independent labels, it has made small brands easier to be recognised internationally. You need not be a fashion conglomerate like H&M or Zara to make your brand known,” she adds.

5. Nohbody 

To liven up the weekends, Mr Ye Yong Cheng, 21, who is doing his national service, creates apparel at home using his sewing machine so he can make the most of any downtime over the two years.

He fell in love with sewing after being encouraged by his mother to pick up a hobby during the pandemic. 

He started out upcycling, cutting and repurposing old shirts. Soon after, he fell in love with the craft of creating clothes from scratch, using discarded material found at home and in fabric stores in Chinatown. “I struggled a lot as I learnt my sewing entirely from YouTube tutorials,” says Mr Ye, whose parents are divorced.

Egged on by the many home-grown businesses which sprouted during the pandemic, he launched his monochromatic, elusive fashion label, Nohbody, on Instagram in January 2022.  Gothic Victorian styles, East-Asian art, Japanese manga, video games and outfits worn by K-pop idols count among his inspirational touchstones.

Mr Ye, who studied art for his O levels, takes reference from character designs in role-playing video games Final Fantasy and Legend Of Zelda. “I always imagined what their cool outfits would be like in real life,” he says, letting on that he, his 28-year-old sister and their mother, who runs a property investment business, are all video-gaming fanatics.

“It may sound delusional, but from the start, I intend for wearers of my clothing to feel like a main character in a video game or film. My clothing can become a costume that brings out an alter ego that is separate from your own identity.” 

Nohbody’s aesthetic is defined by silhouettes and geometric shapes that accentuate the wearer’s frame. The label specialises in skin-baring, deconstructed corset looks with fine lacing details and billowing cargo pants, which start at $90. His minimalist Instagram page features deadpan models, seemingly poised in a video game role-playing “pick your character” stance. On good months, he can earn up to $2,000.

The self-taught tailor says: “Corsets really boost the figure and shape of a person. The flexibility afforded by the medium is very appealing and I wanted a modern take on it. The lace backing of the corset also enables people of different sizes to wear it.” 

While Mr Ye stitches pants for the occasional male customer, his main target demographic is women aged 18 to 30. “I am always so amazed by the female figure, artistically. The female figure is so beautiful and underappreciated, especially in Singaporean fashion.  I do get comments that my clothes are sexualised, especially in Singaporean society, but my female friends have told me that my clothes have helped them embrace their risque side.” 

He believes that alternative fashion today is more accepting of skin-baring and sensuality. “A generation ago, you would see women wearing full dresses to the club. Now, you see micro skirts and clothes that demonstrate how comfortable they are in their skin,” says the avid clubber.  

“Within two years, I want to make something that has made an impact on my life,” says Mr Ye, who was given a platform by local independent multi-collective retailer Spades Room to sell his apparel in October 2022, but ended his stint shortly before entering the army.

“I come from a conservative Asian family so they’ll never tell me that I’m doing a great job or that they’re proud of me. However, they do show my relatives my apparel and say: ‘My son made this.’” 

As a Generation Z fashionista in Singapore, he laments that the alternative fashion scene has not come into its own yet. “Most Singaporean fashion is still very commercial to suit a mostly corporate demographic.” 

Despite the proliferation of small ventures here, he observes a lack of recognition and appreciation for local independent designers. This, however, has not stopped him from dreaming big. 

“My dream school is the Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo and I hope my brand can help to define Singapore’s voice in the world of fashion,” he adds.