it's a bit of a second hand fashion haven

First, the youths here started to dress "New York" - their personality-fuelled, sometimes chaotic style referential of eras past because much of what they wear are from another time and had previously been owned by another.

- Noelle Loh and Pang Jiawei

Now, our retail landscape's starting to look like New York's too, with a small handful of vintage boutiques, a growing deluge of thrift stores and some self-defined as an in-between. Noelle Loh and Pang Jiawei go trawling

For the longest time, Singapore’s secondhand fashion scene was – to put it kindly – sad. Besides a small handful of serious vintage boutiques that have been around since the early 2000s (Deja Vu Vintage and Dustbunny Vintage – both of which specialise in exquisitely curated womenswear that date as far back as the 1940s – come to mind), pre‑loved shopping was mostly relegated to the likes of charity shops and the occasional swop meet. And then came the Covid‑19 pandemic and the Gen‑Zers.

Gen Z’s passion for dressing secondhand is well documented. It’s the happy result of a quirky confluence of factors: a love of nostalgia; a desire for no‑holds‑barred self‑expression; hyper eco‑consciousness; pragmatic price sensitivity; and the influence of the social media phenomenon known as TikTok, where trends accelerate, and micro trends and influencers flourish. (Style stars known for their thrifting habits have become global celebrities – see Emma Rogue – while the number of TikTok views for the hashtags #vintage and #thrift are, as of press time, 45.8 billion and 14.2 billion respectively.) What’s notable now is that Singapore’s starting to have the bricks‑and‑mortar shops to fire up the fervour even more.