Cover At 92, Edward Kwan of Wai Cheong Tailors still goes to work every day
At 92, Edward Kwan of Wai Cheong Tailors still goes to work every day
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Tatler speaks with leaders in the local tailoring scene, and dives into the evolution of men’s fashion in Singapore
Speaking with leading figures in the local sartorial scene, we examine the evolution of men’s tailoring in Singapore—from colonial times to the contemporary era.
The oldest tailor still at work in Singapore is Edward Kwan of Wai Cheong Tailors, who recently turned 92. An active and articulate conversationalist, he retains a vivid memory of his halcyon days as a cutter. Kwan is probably the richest existing source of information on Singapore’s tailoring scene in the latter half of the 20th century.
However, the roots of Singapore’s sartorial culture stretch back a little further than that, to the period around the Opium Wars. In the early‐ to mid‐1800s, British and American merchants made fortunes trading goods shipped from China and India via Hong Kong and Singapore, and tailors from the UK set out to take advantage of this newly affluent client base.
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British tailors set up shop in Asia’s port cities, producing European‐style garments for expatriate entrepreneurs, military officers and colonial administrators. To keep up with demand, the tailors trained local assistants, many of whom eventually split off to establish their own businesses and training mentees of their own. Tailoring skills were typically passed from master to apprentice, or father to son.
Sadly, Kwan did not have the opportunity to benefit from a generational transfer of wisdom. His father opened Wai Cheong Tailors on Cross Street in 1933, a few years after arriving in Singapore. The elder Kwan came from Guangzhou, a port city that would have possessed its fair share of seasoned tailors, so he very likely brought some measure of sartorial skills with him. His son cannot be certain. “In 1941, during the Second World War, the Japanese came and they took my father away,” Kwan explains. “I suppose he was killed. We never found him again. At that time, I was 10, so I didn’t know him very well.”
By this point, Wai Cheong had moved into a shophouse at 44 North Bridge Road. “My mother was very stubborn, so she kept the shop all through the occupation and afterwards,” Kwan says. “When I finished my schooling in 1951, she told me it was time for me to take over. I was very raw, I didn’t know tailoring, but back then, there were old masters you could study with. So, by trial and error, gradually I learnt.”
A decade later, Kwan had mastered his craft and was so respected by his peers that he was appointed president of the Singapore Merchant Tailors’ Association. “There were not many tailors in those days—these were the main ones,” he says, pointing at a picture on his wall of the association’s 27 members, resplendent in skinny‐lapelled silk and mohair suits, flanking a young Lee Kuan Yew.
As the 1960s wore on, tourism picked up in Singapore and Kwan began developing a steady clientele among travellers. “The Qantas pilots and crew would stay at the Mayfair Hotel on Armenian Street, near my shop, or at Raffles, also nearby,” Kwan says. “Through word of mouth from the Qantas people, more Australians came and became some of my most loyal customers.” Kwan expanded his overseas clientele when, in 1977, he moved into the original Shangri‐La Hotel on Orange Grove Road—where he would stay for 40 years.
Rather than cultivate a loyal client base as Kwan did, many so‐called tailors simply went for a fast buck. “It’s not possible to make a good suit in 24 hours, but tourists came to Singapore with that expectation, because they’d heard that’s what you could get in Hong Kong,” Kwan says. “A lot of tailor shops, they weren’t really tailors; they were traders and they didn’t care if a tourist complained about the poor quality of their suit, because the tourist would be gone from Singapore the next day. It was hit and run; they had the money, that’s all they cared about.”
This approach did enormous damage to the local industry, Kwan says, believing that “it spoiled the whole market here, made international visitors lose faith” in Singaporean tailors. A strip of pseudo‐tailors opened on Pagoda Street following the government’s touristification of Chinatown. “They didn’t know how a jacket should fit, how a trouser should fit. They’d use anyone to sew a garment, so long as they did it fast. But taxi drivers, tour guides and hotel concierges would send tourists there because they got a 20 or 30 per cent kickback.”
Kwan puts his longevity in the trade down to having a long‐term approach, taking care of clients and winning repeat business. He points to a picture on the wall of his most famous single‐shot customer, former US president Bill Clinton. “Of course, I’m very, very happy when someone like this comes to me,” he says. “But I can’t live on this picture. I’d go hungry. I have to rely on ordinary people, regular clients, friends who come again and again.”
Another Singaporean tailor that has cemented a loyal following since its establishment nearly a century ago is CYC. Famed today as the preferred haberdasher to Singapore’s political elite (its location directly opposite parliament can’t hurt), CYC got off to a humble start in 1935 when founder Chiang Yick Ching emigrated from Shanghai, opening an unassuming hole‐in‐the‐wall concession selling tailored shirts.
Gradually, he managed to accumulate sufficient funds to open a proper retail outlet, and over time, in parallel with Singapore’s advance from third world country to first, the business grew under the leadership of Chiang’s sons. Today, CYC is run by Chiang’s granddaughter Fong Loo Fern, who took over the company in the 1990s.
“Our focus has always been on shirts. My grandfather and grandmother’s skill set was cutting and sewing shirts, and I think during those early days, that’s
what there was demand for in this tropical climate—not many people wore suits, mainly just the British and Europeans,” she says. “In the 1930s, Singapore was very much just a trading settlement, people lived very simple lives. If you look at the pictures back then, people were often just wearing white shirts and plain trousers—the way they dressed was very, very simple.”
Fong suggests that the reason Hong Kong tailoring has always been more technically advanced than the Singaporean variant, is because it is only relatively recently that suits can be worn comfortably here. “Before we had air con in every office or home, most people just had fans, so it made sense to wear a short‐sleeved shirt,” she says. “Sometimes, maybe even shorts too.”
Like Kwan, Fong bemoans the unrealistic demand for super‐fast service. “We make our shirts in‐house, here in Singapore, but it still normally takes three or four days at least. We can make a shirt in one day for a very good customer, who has a pressing need, but there’s a tremendous amount of stress on everyone involved,” she says.
Above Kevin Seah, one of the city’s most painstaking and expensive tailors
Kevin Seah, one of the city’s most painstaking and expensive tailors
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A belief that tailoring in Asia should be fast and cheap has long been the bane of Kevin Seah’s existence. Unabashedly one of this city’s most painstaking
and expensive tailors, Seah says educating clients that a good suit requires patience and finances has been one of the greatest challenges he has faced in his 30 years in the business.
“So many people only knew shopping mall ‘tailor shops’ catering to the tourist market, promising a one‐day turnaround on a supposed ‘Super 150s cashmere‐wool’ suit for $500,” Seah says with a sigh. “For many years, not many people knew what real tailoring is and didn’t understand the number of hours needed to make a real suit by hand, or the value of quality materials.”
Above A renaissance in dandyism saw men embracing patterns such as batik, like this one by Seah
A renaissance in dandyism saw men embracing patterns such as batik, like this one by Seah
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Around 15 years ago, as the world spiralled into financial crisis, there was a resurgence of interest in classic tailoring—investment in fewer, higher‐quality clothes (a philosophy of “buy less but better”) and a renaissance in dandyism. “At that time, the sartorial scene was filled with men making a statement with their choice of bold colours and fabric combinations,” Seah says. “It was definitely an exciting period because it brought a new, refreshed perspective towards men dressing up.”
In the intervening years, internationally, a new breed of tailors has sprung up to cater to this demand for modern men’s apparel. In Singapore, some of the most prominent names in contemporary tailoring, such as Dylan Ang of Three Buttons and Matthew Lai of Kay‐Jen, are former protégés of Seah.
The New Breed
Three Buttons’s Ang takes pride in his sense of perfectionism. “We go on a journey with our clients, guiding their tailoring experience, with the goal of crafting a unique garment of the highest quality, one that fits perfectly and represents their personality,” he says. “Every jacket or trouser is drafted personally by me, and I’ll never allow any garment to be collected unless the client and I are both utterly satisfied with it.”
Ang personally drafts every jacket or trouser
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No less punctilious in approach, when Lai started his own business, he entered a collaboration with respected second‐generation tailor Dylan & Son. His partner Dylan Chong handled the bespoke side of the operation, while Lai ran made‐to‐measure.
Nowadays, Lai is totally out on his own, his business Kay‐Jen offers soft, lightweight tailoring in a choice of either bespoke or made‐to‐order from an industrial‐chic shop on Erskine Road, behind Maxwell Food Centre.
“Singaporean tailoring was traditionally very structured, English style, because the first wave of tailors here came from Britain,” Lai says. “My mentor, Thomas Wong of The Prestigious, initially taught me that British way of pattern‐making. But obviously, my generation prefers something lighter and softer. So I take a lot of inspiration from the Italians—Neapolitan and Florentine tailoring. I make a jacket as light as possible, which is more compatible with Singapore’s climate and lifestyle.”
Matthew Lai of Kay‐Jen
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Though he operates in a separate category entirely, Lai says there is an advantage to the presence of so many low‐price, low‐quality tailors in this region: they act as something of a “gateway drug”, introducing young men to tailoring culture. “A lot of my customers, they’ve tried cheap tailors in Singapore, Bangkok or Vietnam,” he explains, “and when the results didn’t turn out as they’d hoped, they decided to try somewhere more costly and see what the difference is. When they try me, they compare the quality to the cheap tailoring they’ve had in the past, and then they understand why I charge the prices I do.”
A Change of Pace
In creating clothes that work well in a tropical climate, Singapore’s contemporary tailors have generally adopted a less structured architecture—unlined or half‐lined jackets with soft canvassing and minimal padding, and extensive use of lightweight or open‐weave cloth. Most also embrace patterns such as batik and florals that complement the city’s equatorial setting, as well as laid‐back designs like the safari jacket and overshirt.
In Personam founder Samuel Ng
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Just as Singaporean tailoring is breaking away from the discipline’s formal, boardroom roots, so too are some of the rising names, who are foregoing their corporate backgrounds.
For example, Samuel Ng, the founder of Singapore custom clothier In Personam, first became interested in the sartorial arts during his days as a law student. After graduation and several years practising, he quit a stable career as a lawyer to follow his passion and establish his tailoring business, much to his parents’ horror. (The fact that he still lectures in ethics at the Singapore Management University’s Yong Pung How School of Law, offer them some measure of solace.)
Lyn Kua and Ken Zhou of Assemble
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Similarly, Ken Zhou gave up a lucrative job in finance to found Assemble with his wife, Lyn Kua. Along with stuffy high‐rise offices and endless spreadsheets, he
hopes to leave traditional pinstripe banker suits behind. “We’re going for the less conventional look. We try not to sell standard business suits—instead, we try to sell more cultivated essentials,” he explains. “We specialise in elevated, summery outfits, a lot of linens, printed shirts, shirt‐jackets, denim jeans.”
While Assemble does have customers come and make old‐school navy, charcoal and black suits, Zhou says: “We’re seeing a shift in tailored menswear towards more comfortable, smart‐casual garments such as sport coats and safari jackets. At Assemble, we try to keep it fun, with lots of colour options, interesting cloth, vibrant custom linings, and so forth.”
Globally, dress standards have been growing more casual for decades, a trend only accelerated by the pandemic and the move to working from home. Nevertheless, Zhou says “people still want to look good, they want to impress others, they want to express themselves, but they want to be comfortable”. By the sound of things, Singapore’s new breed of tailors are a perfect fit for the zeitgeist.
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Credits
Photography: Frenchescar Lim
Grooming: Benedict Choo
Images: Three buttons; Kevin Seah; In Personam; Kay-Jen (Jackets); Assemble (Outfit)
