Less than a year old, Aallss is the rising Singaporean handbag brand to watch

SINGAPORE – A new wave of minimalist, mid-range handbag brands from South-east Asia has been redefining wardrobes of late. Amid ongoing luxury fatigue, in both design and price point, bag lovers have been looking beyond the usual names for chic, lesser-known carryalls.

And the region is proving a goldmine. Thailand has up-and-coming She Knows and leather label Lunne; The Philippines has Gen Z favourite GVN; and Malaysia has brands like Inrea.

Singapore may have a promising contender in Aallss.

Less than a year old, the online label has been slowly taking over social media and already has customers outside Singapore. Half its clientele comes from the United States, Australia and China.

Building a brand selling leather handbags can be daunting – there are details to consider like hardware, whether they should have folded or painted edges, and that pricier factor of man-hours.

Good thing founder Alison Lim likes a challenge.

Where technical details can deter others from giving it a go, Lim geeks out on closure fastenings and strap lengths. “Even (measurements being) 1cm or 2cm off can influence the entire style of the handbag. That’s a personal fulfilment challenge for me,” she tells The Straits Times.

The 34-year-old previously spent eight years working in the tech industry, doing partnerships and business development, but her heart has always been in fashion.

She studied fashion marketing and communications at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, and did a bit of freelance styling after graduation in 2011. The gruelling hours of hauling and steaming clothes made her crave an office job behind a desk, she jokes, which led her to apply for one in tech.

But corporate life left her missing her creative side, and in 2021, during the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic, she started using her downtime to craft silk bags. These hand-knotted Vast Silk Knotted Bags ($175) were sold on Instagram for two to three years on an ad-hoc basis, as Lim had to cut cloth and knot it herself.

Her mostly Singaporean customers included brides who toted the little purses on their big day.

In mid-2024, she decided to make Aallss (a play on her name, minus the vowels) official. The shift from an Instagram brand to a “proper brand” meant no doing things by half measures, so Lim quit her job and went looking for manufacturing partners.

The sourcing process was a blur of meeting potential partners in China, pulling her carry-on of sketches and samples through factories, and having tea with bosses – “the Chinese way of doing business”. “I drank so much tea,” she recalls in amusement.

She landed on a small-scale one headquartered in Hong Kong with production in Guangzhou, who respected her design without trying to make compromises. Good working chemistry is hard to come by, she says.

For capital, she put in a five-figure sum from her savings, most of which went to producing product samples.

Polished, polite, perfect

When it comes to design, Lim is unwavering in her vision. She has always liked unique-looking, vintage bags, thrifting them from markets like Bangkok’s Chatuchak or online from eBay. Personal preference led her to seek out those without logos or metallic accents – something she realised was lacking in the market.

“Handbags in fashion have always been a trend-led item. I wanted something women could easily pick up and use without thinking if it’s on trend or matches their outfit for the day,” she says.

“I wanted to create a product and brand that is very quietly elegant. The brand should be restrained, private; we focus on refined lines, the silhouette and proportions.”

It aptly describes her debut style when she relaunched Aallss in November 2025: the Belle Handbag ($275). The East-West silhouette may be of the moment, but its clean lines and triangular sides have a vintage timelessness. Subtle branding is discreetly tucked behind the bag’s exterior flap.

The buttery-soft exterior is not from cow, but apple. Apple peel and water-based polyurethane make up this vegan leather, although that was not Lim’s reason for choosing it.

She was focused more on hand feel and what suited the style. The cost of this innovative, scratch-resistant material is almost on a par with real leather.

She sent a few bags to Singaporean influencers to test at launch. Several videos gained traction and the opening stock of a few hundred bags sold out, requiring a pre-order for the next drop. Within the month, international orders came in, including from Hawaii.

The response surprised her, admits Lim, who chalks it down to good timing around the festive season.

Despite the brand’s Instagram popularity, she has observed that her paying customers are mostly “private” women without much social media presence. They represent to her the Aallss girl: “polished, polite, perfect”.

“They enjoy dressing up and don’t need logo luxury to speak to their dressing style,” she says. “I don’t believe we can all be perfect, but we can strive to be. We all love imagining a better version of ourselves.”

Could they be followers of the quiet luxury wave of mostly minimalist, logo-less fashion?

Quiet luxury is a trend, Lim counters, but refined simplicity is eternal.

“The market is saturated, but shoppers shop wisely. As long as you’re confident about your product and stay true to why you design what you do, the loyal customers will keep coming back,” she says, adding that she has a few regulars who own her entire collection, while small, in every colour.

“People who love the brand will bring out the essence and story we’re trying to tell.”

Making a Singaporean bag

Emphasising her roots in her storytelling, Lim is proud to be a Singaporean brand, especially in a category where there are few players.

Not many names come to mind when recalling a Singaporean handbag label – they are either large companies with resources to produce at scale or an ultra-luxury purveyor of exotic leathers.

High production costs could be one reason, Lim offers, as the minimum order quantity for a handbag averages 300 to 500 pieces for each style in every colour. “The initial investment is high. The man-hours needed are way more, and if there are mistakes at any stage, the risk is higher.”

Add to that difficulties like finding reliable product partners and having to juggle multiple moving parts, plus the challenge of having to constantly market the brand without newness, and you have an inkling as to why few solo entrepreneurs are keen.

Unlike with clothes, you cannot really introduce new styles every week, Lim points out.

She has since released her second leather style Lily ($395), another vintage-inspired design with a classic purse frame and polished gusset closure, this time in genuine leather.

Her goal is to bring a Singaporean brand to a global audience.

China is on the cards in 2026, thanks to a customer there who ordered a Belle handbag. The customer posted it on Xiaohongshu and got 1,000 likes, which converted into some orders. Lim is now intrigued by the market.

She has also since upgraded her operation to work with international fulfilment partners – a far cry from her early days of the business, when she packed hundreds of orders from home and sent them out herself.

What she still handles by hand, however, is the making of her very first style, the Vast Silk Knotted Bag. Each takes two to three hours to iron, sew and knot the fine fabric – a process so labour-intensive that no one would take her up on it.

Even semi-retired seamstresses she found in Tiong Bahru turned her down, Lim says with a laugh.

“They’re older women who want to retire, but are sewing just to pass time. They said it’s too tedious, so I decided I’m going to do it myself.”

Info: Available at aallss.com