Cool corners

Young creatives set up shop in under-the-radar attics and shoebox studios

- Carmen Sin

Until recently, there was nothing to announce the shop's presence. To hit upon the trove of archival Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake designs that are the goods of Gen Z-run boutique Upstairs Garments, interested buyers would first have had to know it was there.

A sandwich board at the foot of its Tanjong Pagar shophouse front now takes care of that. But the uninitiated must still work to spy the narrow doorway between an ice cream parlour and a Korean barbecue joint, then take the stairs to the top, only to arrive, perplexed, at a spartan office space.

That is, until one of its four owners, watching from a closed-circuit television screen, opens a camouflaged door leading to the final flight of steps to their fashion hideout – an attic.

The quartet of avant-garde clothing buffs, each no older than 23, are part of a class of young locals claiming unlikely and hidden spaces as a base for their creative energies.

Attics and scuzzy shophouse studios are their preference, though, realistically, it is slim pickings for them. Real estate consultancy Knight Frank puts the average rent of Singapore's prime retail units in the first quarter of 2025 at $27.90 per square foot.

What we have here are people coming to talk about clothes...It's a hobbyist place, a community.

CO-OWNER XAVIER EGER, on the Gen Z-run boutique Upstairs Garments Fashion, music and wellness tell The Straits Times that profit is by the by.

At Upstairs Garments, where the wood floor groans with racks of coats, blazers, jeans and boots in finely differentiated shades of black, the space is only marginally used for retail.

About 70 per cent of its clientele live abroad, meaning they buy from the shop's Instagram page, says tacitly appointed leader Vegas Lee, 23.