The Closet Lover founders, both lupus patients, reflect on 17-year brand journey after closure

SINGAPORE – Photo shoots in far-flung destinations like Egypt and Spain, and quarterly sourcing trips to China.

For all the perceived glamour involved in running a fashion business, what Singaporean sisters Brianna, 39, and Bertilla Wong, 35, will miss most about their label The Closet Lover (TCL) are the human interactions with their customers, staff and live-stream hosts.

“Connection is what we’ve always loved about the business. In the early years, there was nobody to talk to except each other,” says Bertilla.

The co-founders announced in early May that, to prioritise their health,

the

popular home-grown womenswear label would wind up

after almost 18 years. They ceased operations on June 30 and closed their last store in Tampines 1 on July 2.

Both sisters have lupus, a chronic autoimmune condition where the body’s immune system attacks healthy tissues and organs.

Bertilla was diagnosed first at 15, while Brianna was diagnosed at 22. Because the symptoms of lupus are more manageable when diagnosed at a younger age, Bertilla says she has had fewer major flare-ups.

Brianna was tipped off about her diagnosis when she started suffering from swollen and “frozen” joints. After a blood test confirmed her suspicions, she managed small flare-ups over the years with medication.

During her first major flare-up, a cough on a work trip to Taiwan in 2017 turned into gasps for air on Christmas Eve. She was hospitalised for a month – the first of many hospital stays.

Each time Brianna was warded, Bertilla would run TCL solo with her team. “In the long run, it was not very good for me either, because I’m also a lupus patient. If it’s not her who falls ill, it’s me.”

The breaking point was Brianna’s second major flare-up in Seoul in February. She developed “pig trotter” feet – a sign of ailing kidneys being unable to dispel toxins – but pushed through the work trip before getting hospitalised back home.

This time, the inflammation had affected her kidneys, heart and lungs. Failing to keep her lupus under control could lead to organ failure, she was warned.

Some customers had suggested running TCL as an online-only venture, or taking a step back to let team members drive it. But these were not viable long-term solutions, say the sisters.

“The stress of running a business is still there, and will always be at the back of our minds. We would never be able to rest properly,” adds Bertilla, who has two sons aged four and five. Her husband manages the financial aspect of TCL.

“We would talk about business every single day. Even when I’m sleeping, my mind is running the numbers. What have we not launched? When should we start planning for Chinese New Year? After we announced the closure, I felt so relieved. It was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.”

In the last five years, they had tried to step away and go behind the scenes, but that did not work out, notes Brianna, who is in a relationship.

“Right from when we launched, it has always been our faces fronting it, so customers associate the brand with us. It’s very hard for us not to be involved in the business, which is why we made the decision to just shut down fully.”

Blogshop era

Considered a staple of the local fashion scene, TCL’s closure marks the end of an era for many Singapore fans. At its peak, it had four stores in Singapore, two in Malaysia and two franchise outlets in Cambodia.

The sisters started TCL in 2007 to make extra pocket money. Their father is a retired civil servant turned taxi driver and their mother is a homemaker.

Brianna, who had just graduated from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, put in $3,000 of her savings as capital. Bertilla, who was still in junior college, contributed contacts from wholesale mall City Plaza.

This was the era of the blogshop, hosted mostly on LiveJournal, where budding entrepreneurs bought wares in bulk from suppliers at City Plaza to sell online. Competition was stiff, and blogshop owners battled one another for stocks.

The sisters would wake up at 7am to camp outside the mall before it opened.

“It was very chaotic. Within a few minutes, you’d have to decide whether you want to ‘bao’ (meaning ‘wrap’ in Chinese), or take the whole batch of designs, so it would be exclusive to you,” says Bertilla, who skipped classes in university to do so. “I was a terrible student,” she adds in jest.

The race did not end there. What followed was a harried process of shooting the products and uploading them to the website by the next day. “You had to aim to be the first one to sell so people would buy from you,” recalls Brianna.

For the first few years, the sisters photographed and modelled everything themselves, shooting against a white wardrobe in their bedroom.

As the local blogshop scene ebbed and flowed, they kept up. More brands began hiring influencers as their models, and the scene was soon dominated by a handful of familiar faces.

Studio-shot collections evolved to outdoor shoots, which required hauling the clothes to scenic locales around Singapore. The sisters hired their first professional photographer, who suggested they hire professional models to elevate TCL.

It was no walk in the park. Brianna wanted to give up after the first three years. “I just felt like the effort wasn’t worth it. There were no results and I’d rather do part-time jobs then,” she says.

Bertilla helmed the business solo for six months while studying sociology at the National University of Singapore, continuing the gruelling weekly cycle of camping for stocks and launching new collections.

“Our mum wasn’t very supportive, especially because I went to good schools,” she says, having attended Nanyang Girls’ High School and Hwa Chong Junior College. “She wanted me to become a doctor or lawyer, after studying so hard my whole life, instead of doing my own business without a secure future.”

Her persistence paid off and sales finally began rolling in, prompting Brianna to rejoin the business to help. The latter had been studying for a bachelor’s degree in mass communications at SIM, and dropped out after a year to focus on TCL.

“I think it pushed me to work even harder, because I had to make it work,” adds Brianna. “My mum always said, if you don’t have a degree, it’s hard to survive and nobody will want to hire you. I wanted to prove her wrong, so I used this as my push factor to work day and night.”

Things got real when they had to file for goods and services tax for the first time – meaning they had hit $1 million in revenue in a year.

Full-fledged fashion

It took the pair a while to break free from the diminutive label of “blogshop”. When a wholesaler pitched the idea of manufacturing their own designs to stand out, they bit.

Playing designer, they could choose their own colours and sizes, expanding beyond the standard S to XL sizing. Their first collection included a colourblocked blouse.

It turned out to be a false start for TCL’s originals, which struggled to hit the minimum order quantity for designs, and were harder still to sell.

This period coincided with the sisters’ brief stint at playing wholesalers themselves, which landed them $100,000 in debt.

It took a year of sleepless nights trying to clear their debt by going back to selling ready stocks.

They bounced back in 2012 when, for their second act, they decided to cut out the middleman and fly to China themselves to find suppliers.

Their 100th collection on TCL’s website proved a breakthrough, thanks in particular to a suede blazer with polka dot lining that went viral online. As their original designs gained traction, they could progress to evolving minute details like manufacturing buttons with their logo.

After testing the waters with pop-up stores, the sisters opened their first physical store at Bugis Junction in 2015, marking a new chapter for them in offline retail. Two years later, they opened stores in Raffles Xchange and Tampines 1 just months apart.

Business at the physical stores made up 60 per cent of total sales.

The sisters believe the brand was at its peak during its era of collaborations with local influencers, especially fashion personality Andrea Chong.

The 33-year-old, who today runs her own womenswear brand, Good Addition, worked with TCL on two collections in 2018 – steering the process from designing to shooting the campaigns abroad.

“She pitched a trip to Egypt, which was so niche – but in Drea we trust. We visited the pyramids, we sat on camels,” Bertilla recalls with an incredulous laugh.

The first collection sold out in minutes and drew “crazy” queues at TCL’s stores, prompting many back orders – and a second capsule shot in Spain and launched in 2019.

“I think for consumers, it was very refreshing. Till this day, customers still talk about certain items.”

Closet clear-out

Behind the polished photo shoots, however, they had been quietly battling lupus throughout.

The condition requires patients to have a lot of rest and minimal stress – two privileges entrepreneurship does not afford.

Yet, it was Bertilla who made the call to shut. “Brianna actually didn’t want to close. She always pushes herself. But as a sister, I just felt she can’t risk her life,” Bertilla says, choking up. “No matter how good your business is or how many years you’ve done, you cannot sacrifice your health.”

The changing retail landscape has taken a toll on them physically. Getting onboard TikTok live selling meant energy-intensive, late nights that wrapped around 3am, repeating every other week. For their Chinese New Year 2025 sales, the sisters took turns to host the live streams five times a week.

“The brand is so intrinsically tied to us that if we don’t appear for the lives, customers don’t feel as connected or convinced by what we are selling,” says Bertilla. “In this industry, some brands do marathon livestreams for six to eight hours – how are we going to fight that? And they’re healthy individuals.”

They had also been plagued by slowed business in the past few years. They signed the lease to their Takashimaya store in January 2020, months before the pandemic hit. Coupled with post-Covid shopping behaviour, the high rental cost was punishing, says Bertilla, who chalks the store down to a “marketing cost”.

Running a business now is so different from before, they add.

“Back then, we’d shoot the item, do some marketing and launch the product – and people would buy. Nowadays, you have to do so many things – styling videos and reels, live streams – just to capture one sale,” says Bertilla.

“It really felt like we had to put in 200 per cent effort to sell one product, compared with pre-Covid,” adds Brianna. “This was why I decided I really cannot do this any more. Stress is one of the top triggers for lupus; as a business owner, there is no way you can be stress-free and have sufficient rest all the time.”

Nevertheless, it has been a fulfilling journey both are proud of.

Some of their career highs are marked not by numerical milestones, but by the small things, such as opening their first office in 2010, being able to upgrade their staff’s tables to proper office furniture, and providing their team of 15 full-timers with insurance. Including part-timers, TCL had a team of 44 at closing.

There was also a Care Bear collection launched in end-May, the brand’s first international collaboration and a personal win for Brianna. This final collection broke the label’s records in live-stream viewership and generating back orders. “Bree really wanted to do it to end on a bang. So I told the team, let’s do it for her,” says Bertilla.

Going out on a high, the sisters have no regrets, and plan to rely on content creation on their individual Instagram pages,

@briannawonggg

and

@bertillawong

, while they rest.

“We’ve spent over 17 years building this. It still feels a little bit unreal to close it, because this has basically been a major part of my life. So it’s hard to let go,” says Brianna.

“But it was either I pick my life or I pick my career.”