SEWN BROTHERS

After decades of working quietly behind the scenes, Eddie Goh is honouring the legacy of his late brother, famed cheongsam designer Laichan, by helming the boutique

- Louisa Lim

Two weeks after the death of renowned Singaporean fashion designer Laichan Goh, considered the country's godfather of the modern cheongsam, his eponymous boutique in Mandarin Gallery hums with quiet life on a Monday afternoon.

Customers – some familiar, some new – step through its doors, drawn by memories or newly sparked curiosity.

Behind the counter stands Eddie Goh, the man who had long been the steady hand behind Laichan's shimmering creations and who now helms it solo.

Spirited where his late older brother was serene, Goh – with his salt-and-pepper hair, black-rimmed spectacles and understated attire – has stepped out from the shadows he had long occupied. A freelance ceramist and sculptor, his works were previously showcased in local art galleries and are still being displayed and sold at the boutique today.

For more than three decades, the 58-year-old was content to stay behind the scenes, painstakingly embroidering the sequins, beadwork and delicate blooms that adorned the local brand's cheongsams.

Though Laichan Goh – who died on April 14 at the age of 62 after a seven-year battle with brain cancer – is no longer by Eddie Goh's side, Goh says he still feels his brother's presence in the atelier.

"When he was alive, we would work side by side," Goh says, when The Straits Times meets him and his elder sister, former jewellery designer Michelle Goh, at the boutique on April 28. "Even now, when I'm doing something, I feel this nudge – like he's quietly pushing me to do better."

The bond between the brothers, though deep in adulthood, was not always that way. Growing up in a bustling household of 15 siblings, of which Laichan Goh was the 13th, Eddie Goh – the youngest – remembers a childhood filled with noise and laughter, overseen by their homemaker mother and entrepreneur father.

HONING THE CRAFT