More multi-label stores run by Gen Z are popping up. Here are three to check out

SINGAPORE – Move over, thrift stores. Multi-label shops are the new retail format in vogue among young fashion entrepreneurs.

A growing class of Gen Z retailers are starting or pivoting to boutiques anchored by a selection of small international labels. At these trendy spaces, a mix of lesser-known and Instagram-famous regional brands are the draw, often imported in small batches by store owners in their 20s who bet on their curatorial judgment.

Like many offline trends, the shift originated online.

For one, choice is paramount in the internet age, and multi-label stores offer more options, says Jermaine Ho. The founder of the multi-label concept store Plop Apparels was an early adopter of the model.

“For a particular pair of pants, there can be different washes. It’s a wider selection, so customers can make better choices.

“Online, you can search for items by price and colour. People would like to have the choice in person, too,” says the 27-year-old, who launched her business in 2022.

The trend is also symptomatic of the Gen Z shopper’s preference for discovery – an attitude cultivated by the world-at-your-fingertips, globalised nature of social media, where people frequently encounter foreign brands.

Audrey Hong, a thrift-store owner, rebranded her unit near Haji Lane as select shop Uno Collectives. The 26-year-old says: “People are not brand-loyal any more; they don’t care about getting one item from a particular source.

“Gen Zs are now very open to trying different styles and brands from different countries. They don’t have to dress fully second-hand any more. Clothes can be from international labels or Singapore blog shops; everyone has been trying to mix and match everything. There’s a focus more on the discovery of new brands.

“The internet has globalised the way that we do things. So everything really has to keep up with that global trend, even retail spaces.”

The surge of interest in regional brands also coincides with the rise of fashion tourism, with Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok becoming popular shopping destinations in recent years.

At one point, the Vietnamese streetwear uniform of baggy jeans and a tiny top was “all over Singapore”, says Cherry Pretty, the co-owner of Zabu Boutique in Hamilton Road. “That’s when the vintage scene here kind of slowed down a bit.”

Pretty, 26, specialises in curated vintage, but has begun stocking mostly Indonesian brands on consignment. Zabu now hosts six consignors. The turn towards small-batch, indie labels still fits within the sustainable shopping movement, she says. “It’s very hard to wear fully second-hand, so that’s where the smaller brands come in, because we still want to shop in a more sustainable way,” she says.

“That’s where the fashion community is headed. At least 50 per cent of your wardrobe can be second-hand, and 50 per cent from smaller brands.”

Here are three multi-label stores to keep on your radar.

1. Incoleur

The 21-year-old proprietor of Incoleur has a simple motto: “Don’t step.” This Singlish injunction to keep it real and shed the posturing is central to the way Thai-born, Singapore-raised student Kalen Piamthipmanus runs his 800 sq ft store.

Tucked away at the foot of an unassuming housing block in Jalan Berseh, Incoleur’s racks of obscure Asian labels and in-group second-hand designer clothing are the stylish trappings of young adult coolness. But Kalen’s club admits everyone.

Office ladies wander in from the nearby Immigration and Checkpoints Authority building. A recent store event managed to draw both mainstream musician Charlie Lim – composer of the 2025 National Day theme song – and left-field rappers Abangsapau and Lil Bebed. (Lil Bebed calls himself the first Singaporean rapper to have “diabetes and chlamydia and high cholesterol”.)

“It’s a very nice blend of people,” Kalen says. “The important thing is that nobody feels tense in the shop. Our tagline is ‘seeing you in colour’. It’s based on a feeling, like we’ll see you for who you are. The ethos behind the space is very much ‘come as you are’; no need for prejudice and ego.”

Kalen, in an all-black outfit, appreciates the irony of stocking mostly monochrome clothes. “The colour is figurative,” he says.

At the moment, Incoleur stocks some 10 to 12 independent brands and an assortment of second-hand clothes, sourced by Kalen and external vendors. The line-up is periodically rotated, but Kalen’s eye is behind it all.

He says: “The first question is, would I wear it? The next question is, would it make sense in Singapore?”

Label-wise, he prefers “Asian-centric emerging designers” and gravitates towards statement basics – easy-to-wear jackets and pants that still look distinct.

Read Moh In Red, a Shanghai-based unisex brand by a designer of Moroccan descent, is representative. Its jeans fall straight and flatteringly, but have an uneven scalloped waist, embroidered with concentric circles. The collar of a jacket is asymmetrical and slightly too large, its front closure off-centre and gently curved.

Incoleur is its only stockist in the world.

Other brands include Vietnam’s The Idiot – a purveyor of offbeat city clothes – and its sub-line ReDone, and Singaporean creator String of Kisses, which does knitwear, and accessories-maker Knarly.

The used designer stock is for those in the know. It is primarily Japanese menswear, with heavyweights such as Junya Watanabe and Yohji Yamamoto in abundance, mixed up with niche contemporary favourites like South Korea’s PAF and Jiyoung Kim, even the odd Diesel piece.

Still, Kalen caters to the fashion-ambivalent with a modest selection of funny graphic tees and affordable tops that start at $10. He says: “Ultimately, fashion should be very accessible. You could stumble into the store by accident, and the prices and the fits of what we have should still feel good.”

Kalen founded the store in August 2025 to plug a gap in the market for menswear he enjoyed. He says: “The frustration was that apart from streetwear, there wasn’t really any place for experimentation or anything in between. It was either streetwear or very colourful, bright and loud brands.

“So I thought, okay, where does the quieter, more reserved kind of person want to exist? Where would they want to find pieces that slide into their wardrobes, aren’t too stressful to put on, but are still distinct and wearable?”

He has sunk $30,000 – a mix of savings and loans – into supplying the place. He even drilled the clothes racks into the walls himself, which is why they are a little crooked, he says.

But clothes are not everything. The shop doubles as a base for a cycling club run by his childhood friend, with the bike parts and cycling apparel for sale scattered among Incoleur’s serious fashion offerings.

It is also an outlet for Kalen’s other great love: music. Most of the counter is taken up by DJ decks. The “semi-club level” equipment has allowed for jam sessions and small music events, with one August show featuring Singaporean rapper Mary Sue. Informal art exhibitions are in the offing.

Kalen says: “This place is a very nice conjunction of a lot of my interests. I never really got to explore them fully before, and being involved with so many different communities in Singapore and being able to showcase them all like this is a big honour and a big pleasure for me.”

Music has also made him a more confident curator for the store. He says: “When I started DJing, people would say, ‘Just trust your taste and let it ride.’

“I try as much as possible to let that lesson seep into everything I do with the store, because ultimately, if you already have so much skin in the game, you might as well take it to the maximum and try to express everything as genuinely and wholeheartedly as possible.”

Info: Located at 01-128, 25 Jalan Berseh. Prices range from $20 to $200 for second-hand clothes and $40 to $180 for new brands.

2. Uno Collectives

Uno Collective’s store near Haji Lane is a candyland of colour. Pink, teal and pops of yellow line the walls, announcing the fun, girly nature of the place.

These are the trendy summer colours that 26-year-old boss Audrey Hong has curated – across tiny tops and mini-skirts – from a clutch of Vietnamese brands for the season. “When it comes to choosing brands to stock, we try to pick not only the ones that are more trendy, but also those we think would suit the Singaporean crowd,” she says.

This means cuts that agree with the sweaty weather and local tastes, lower prices for her clientele of young Gen Zs in their early 20s, and designs distinctive enough to avoid overlap with fast-fashion brands in malls.

The latest crop sold particularly well after a promotional TikTok video gained traction over National Day, hence the sparse shelves, she adds. The video did so well it caught the eye of even record company Universal Music Singapore, which sent Hong hot-pink posters to put up in the shop as part of its semi-viral campaign for Slovak singer Adela.

This time in 2025, the store was a vintage clothing joint, one of three in Hong’s modest thrift empire under the brand Un.wastelands, which she started in 2022.

But in November 2025, the business graduate sensed a shift in consumer winds and decided to rebrand Un.wastelands’ outpost near Haji Lane as Uno Collectives. The boutique’s stock is now evenly split between Vietnamese brands and curated vintage.

“When you are running a vintage store, you keep up to date with all the trends, and I noticed that there was actually a demand for international labels,” she says.

Since then, she has ramped up her catalogue from two to five Vietnamese brands on rotation: Tiemmem, Push Push, Twenti, Migcool and 777angels. She plans to bring in at least two more labels by the year end.

Hong says: “Our generation discovers fashion mainly online, on Pinterest, Instagram and also while travelling. There’s a global element to it. We transitioned to Vietnamese labels because we wanted to bring that global aspect.

“For example, you see something that you want on TikTok, but then you realise, oh, the store is in Vietnam. Then you can’t possibly be booking a flight ticket there. We’re trying to address demand for brands that people want but may not be able to access as easily.”

Though she exclusively imports Vietnamese labels for now, that is more a function of the contacts she has built up in the country. The long-term goal is to bring in styles from more South-east Asian countries and act as a “filter” for customers stumped by the vast number of global brands, she says.

Dressed in a polka-dot shirt with a Peter Pan collar and jeans, Hong fits right in her girlish store. The place is fashioned in her image: the clothes, selected by her, are all casual and pretty; there is a station for making charm bracelets; and prints by one of her favourite artists, Yoshitomo Nara, are framed in a corner.

Because her sensibility shapes her business, Hong considers good sales a compliment to her taste. “It really translates to people liking the things that you curate. Once there’s good reception, it’s affirmative of your taste and curation. That’s always satisfying.”

The troughs are the overhead costs and staffing stressors that have kept her from fully being able to switch off, even on holiday. She adds: “It got to the point where I concluded it’s better if I don’t travel.”

She toyed with the idea of a corporate career after graduating in 2023, taking on a full-time management traineeship in her first year in retail. But she scrapped that after landing a coveted lease at 313@somerset for Un.wastelands. She still runs the Orchard Road store and a second outlet at Queensway alongside Uno Collectives.

Hong says: “To be very honest, retail is not that great an industry because you realise that at the end of the day, whatever you make goes back to the landlord.

“But I still do it for the love of the game. It is my passion to curate. It is my passion to discover brands and bring them to my customers. So, as much as I might have been better off finding a full-time job, I still enjoy doing this.”

Info: Located at 664 North Bridge Road. Prices range from $19 for a vintage top to $55 for pants.

3. With Love

The four-storey operation is a frou-frou haven. The three retail floors carry 20 feminine South-east Asian labels for all occasions: floral corsets for dressy dates, summer frocks for photo-heavy picnics, cocktail dresses for weddings, and casual ruffled tops for everyday wear.

Founded in late 2024 by Mary Knickrehm Kumar, With Love was meant to be a four-week pop-up. It was the then marketer’s experiment in helping regional brands test the Singapore market at a time when options were limited to two unsatisfactory extremes: a weekend pop-up or opening a store.

The idea was to do something in between, longish but not long-term, says the 29-year-old American, who moved to Singapore in 2016.

Within the first four weeks, sales were double the projections. So she kept going, extending the “event” at a single-floor unit in Keong Saik into an almost nine-month run, and quitting her marketing duties at the agency she founded to run the show.

When the lease for With Love’s current Neil Road base opened up, she made things permanent.

Its current digs have allowed for a more ambitious concept. On the first two floors, each brand is given a rack to display its wares, with brands rotated every month.

The third floor is reserved for top performers. Two get their own showrooms, complete with changing rooms – a shop within a shop. These are now filled by Ho Chi Minh-based brands, dreamy Fig & Tonka and the more casual Clothes Bar. The fourth floor is occasionally used for events.

Fig & Tonka’s in-store ascent from a small brand with little name recognition into a showroom occupant is a marker of success for With Love, Knickrehm Kumar says.

Her business has now worked with more than 75 brands. With each starting with an average inventory of 250 to 350 pieces, With Love is one of the larger multi-label outfits here.

The August roster spans Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. All are romantic in style, though a handful tip into different categories, such as Vietnamese brand into.eight’s lightly edgy grey pinstriped tops and Indonesian label Morningsol’s minimalist neutrals.

Love for local

Knickrehm Kumar is a whiz at rattling off individual product names of all 20 brands on the floor, casually pointing out the “Isabel skirt” here and the “Chloe top” there.

She says: “For me, it has always been about the brands. My purpose started from them, versus putting together a store to put out pretty clothes for customers to buy.”

Her zeal for helping brands is closely tied to her career in Singapore.

The Nebraskan native came to Singapore 10 years ago as an international business undergraduate for a summer internship with the now-defunct online fashion rental platform Style Theory.

Though she had not meant to work in fashion, she ended up working at Style Theory for a year and transferred out of her college in Georgia to finish her degree at Singapore Management University. In 2020, she started With Love as a marketing agency that mostly serviced independent fashion labels and alcohol brands.

Knickrehm Kumar says: “That’s when I started noticing a lot of brands wanting to grow outside their home markets, but they were trying to do it through paid advertising and e-commerce. They were having a lot of trouble doing that in a scalable way because it’s really expensive to advertise and work with influencers, and most customers like to try clothes on, so you have a high risk of return and shipping costs. It just wasn’t really working for them.”

She launched With Love, the store, and has not looked back since.

Why go all in on Singapore? Part of it was personal – Knickrehm Kumar met her husband, a Singapore permanent resident, on her first weekend here 10 years ago.

But she was also charmed by the Republic: “It’s just a really cool city to be in and live in and work in, and it’s really accessible to the rest of South-east Asia and Asia in general. You meet so many interesting people.

“I don’t think I would have ever been able to start this business had I been anywhere else in the world. I couldn’t have connected with all these brands from Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. Singapore is a place that allows those connections to happen.”

Info: Located at 142 Neil Road. Prices range from $35 for a top to $260 for a dress.