In a world dominated by fast fashion brands, where trends seem to come and go like the tides, a quiet comfort comes out of slipping on a timeless custom piece. In Singapore, a rising wave of fresh-faced tailors enters the scene, ready to meet the growing demand for such “slow fashion”.
Among them are homegrown bespoke tailors Julianne Tan and Samuel Ng, who have made custom clothing a part of their lives for a decade now. Though most would assume the pair met because of their shared industry, they’ve actually been together since their teenage years; now in their thirties, they each run their own businesses.
“Our stories and timelines are really interwoven, so to speak,” says Tan. Although her brand, Sub Rosa, was formally established only last year, it has been years in the making alongside Ng’s In Personam, which first came into being in December 2013.
From the outside in
Ng’s love for clothing was probably sparked before he could have imagined a career in the industry. “When I was a kid, I already loved choosing my own clothes,” he says, adding that though he knew what he wanted to wear as a child, that didn’t always translate to what he got in his wardrobe.
“Maybe it was from that inability to decide that I started to have this desire to have clothes made for myself — to be able to choose.” Ng would make that dream a reality during his time in university, where he studied law. Using money he’d earned from winning book prizes, he delved into the world of custom-made clothing.
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While tailoring, even up till the early 2010s, was still largely seen in Singapore as something for finance folks and stylish professionals, the situation was quite different in Hong Kong, Ng recalls, describing his visits there during summer breaks. “Central doesn’t feel much better than in Singapore, but people make an effort, and they do look better; they look more confident, and they feel more confident.”
That image stuck with Ng as he dove deeper into the tailoring scene with a self-described “obsessive” approach to learning the ropes, figuring out everything from construction methods to fabric types.
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Still, entering an industry largely composed of older, well-established players as an outsider was no easy feat. At the time, Ng notes, tailoring was “very closed off and very secretive”. He started by watching and speaking with tailors as they worked on suits for him; once completed, he brought those suits home and took them apart to see how they were made. “In hindsight, maybe that wasn’t the best idea,” he laughs. “It was a glorious waste of money, but … that’s one way to learn when you don’t come from a family of tailors.”
After graduating, Ng rented an “incredibly small” space in Ming Arcade on Cuscaden Road, using that as his centre of operations for a yet-unnamed tailoring business while undergoing his pupilage at a law firm. Measuring just about 9 sq m, this was where he and Tan would find their footing in the industry.
Like Ng, Tan’s life intersected with fashion from a young age; she learned to operate a sewing machine from her mother and became interested in clothes-making early on. “I was maybe the only one in my class who got very excited doing home economics — I was that person,” she says with a chuckle. She would go on to take pattern-making lessons as an adult.
Though she was still pursuing a career in psychology when Ng started his business, Tan found herself in Ming Arcade increasingly often to help him. “That was where I first started having pieces made for myself,” she adds, adding that these were “simple” cheongsams for daytime occasions.
One of these dresses sparked the first Sub Rosa creation. A girlfriend of one of Ng’s clients noticed a piece hanging on a rack and asked if she could have one made for an upcoming tea ceremony. “At the time, people were doing red cheongsams with dragons and phoenixes, and really, no one was doing that kind of minimal styling,” Tan says. From there, she continued making dresses as a passion project on the side.
Stitching it together
The couple continued in Ming Arcade for a few years, operating on weeknights and weekends while juggling their day jobs. Eventually, though, Ng decided to make In Personam his full-time gig. “I was a very good student in law school, and I would like to think I was a reasonably decent practitioner, but it just didn’t give me the same kind of fulfilment that [tailoring] gave me,” he explains.
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After making the switch, he — and Tan, who was then pursuing her master’s degree — moved into a new space at Downtown Gallery in 2017. But while it was a “beautiful, beautiful space”, he says this glass-walled spot in the heart of town wasn’t quite the location they had envisioned for themselves. Sub Rosa and In Personam both operate on an appointment-only basis, and the couple prefer having an intimate setting where clients can feel at home.
As luck would have it, their landlord’s plans to renovate the building soon left them searching for a new place. They eventually settled on their current location, a two-storey space on the fringes of town (in keeping with their need for privacy, Ng requests that the address be left out of this story).
Around this time, Tan came to a crossroads: She had just completed her bond with a government agency and was faced with the dilemma of whether to continue working in psychology or keep things going with Sub Rosa, which was steadily growing through word of mouth. Of course, no prizes for guessing what she chose.
Now fully committed to their businesses, the couple has found intersections between Sub Rosa and In Personam. Ng notes that their different niches — his in menswear and Tan’s in womenswear — have allowed them to learn from each other.
“It may be a generalisation, but it does seem that with menswear tailoring … a lot of the focus is spent on fit, finishing, construction, and things like that; and with womenswear, it seems to be more design-led,” he says. “So I’ve been inspired by the design part of womenswear, and that has influenced my approach towards menswear, while she has been influenced by my views on fit and construction.”
For instance, Ng learned from his menswear background that silk, while typically seen as a premium material, often isn’t long-lasting as a lining fabric. It also sticks to the skin, an especially salient problem in Singapore’s humid climate. The usual alternatives, especially in dresses, are synthetic materials such as viscose, which offer poor breathability and leave wearers feeling muggy and sweaty.
Ng thus suggested using cuprammonium — a lining typically used in men’s suiting, known simply as “cupro” or by its brand name Bemberg — for Sub Rosa’s dresses. Made from cotton extract, the semi-synthetic material is soft to the touch and more breathable than other lining materials, making it a solid choice for cheongsams here.
Going at it together has also allowed Tan and Ng to experiment with their design and construction choices. Tan returns to that first cheongsam she made for a client in Ming Arcade. “[The client] picked a fitted top with a flared skirt in a periwinkle blue wool.” That material, she highlights, was a suiting fabric, which “actually had a beautiful drape and swing” compared to typical womenswear fabrics.
The little things
Having worked on custom clothing for a decade, Tan and Ng have gathered a loyal following, many of whom have even followed them since their days at Ming Arcade. “We always talk about how fortunate and blessed we are that people would trust us,” says Tan, highlighting that although their first space was small, and they didn’t have a signboard, “people came in and trusted [them] enough to make an order”.
Today, most clients at Sub Rosa are those looking to tailor clothing for weddings. Tan notes that for most women in Singapore, weddings are a “first port of call” when they think of getting a cheongsam specially made. Ng, too, receives a substantial number of clients looking for wedding ensembles at In Personam, with some also seeking items that can be worn in the workplace.
While many of their clients tend to stick with typical navy suits and lace appliqué dresses, the more unusual creations stick in Tan’s and Ng’s minds. Tan recalls a client whose requests challenged her preconceived notions of what works when it comes to clothing. “She wanted this green-grey for the dress, and a slightly different tone for the sleeves … she picked up this [pair of fabrics] and asked ‘Do you think they’ll go together?’ and I said, ‘I’m not sure’. But the moment she put them on herself, it really worked.”
That experience made Tan take a step back and consider that there was more than just the tried-and-true pairings, especially in the world of tailoring and customisation. “I felt so humbled but excited to be doing something new.”
Ng, meanwhile, shares the story of a New York-based art dealer who had learned of In Personam by chance. “He was just the most creative person I’ve seen,” he says, adding that the client had even brought upholstery fabric he wanted made into trousers. That experience of creative collaboration, Ng adds, re-energised him at a time when he felt he was “doing the same thing over and over again”.
Clients like these help keep him and Tan feeling eager to tackle the next project, even as they contend with the “potentially soul-sucking” administrative and business side of things. He adds that the often repetitive nature of running a business can also be draining: “It’s easy to lose interest in what you do if you don’t remind yourself of your purpose and stay grounded in the reasons you do what you do.”
To keep their eyes fresh, the couple travels often, which also allows them to keep abreast of the best and latest tailoring practices in other places. Tan recalls a recent visit to the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou, where they were “the only ones there,” and they spent the day appreciating and learning about the craft and application of silk.
Of course, this isn’t just travel for travel’s sake; Tan and Ng take these new sights as an opportunity to grow their repertoire and offerings. “Maybe it’s incumbent on us to introduce these things as part of our business, so people see clothes for more than what they are in a world where fast fashion is the norm,” says Ng.
He notes that, although one can choose to ascribe “as much or as little meaning” to these finer details of clothing, he and Tan choose to give those and those things a little more emphasis “because life is more interesting when you do things in a more thoughtful and meaningful way”.
“Tailoring,” he concludes, “is ultimately an expression of your liberty — what you like and don’t like. Be it a preference, a desire or even just a whim, it’s a manifestation of your will, one way or another.”
