Journal

Editorial.

Stories about the designers, cities, and subcultures that make Southeast Asian fashion the most exciting in the world right now.

Lookbook · SS 2025

The Saigon Edit

LSoul's new collection shot across Ho Chi Minh City's rooftops and alleys — where heritage and hyper-present collide.

1 March 2025 · 4 min read

Feature · Heritage

Batik Renaissance

"People think batik is traditional," Amirah says, pouring teh tarik in her Bangsar studio. "But batik was always experimental. The artisans in Kelantan were doing abstraction before abstraction had a name." Amirah Yusof left a senior role at a multinational fashion conglomerate in Singapore to return to Kuala Lumpur in 2021. The move looked like a step backwards on paper. It was not. She founded Studio Kuali — named after the Malaysian wok, the vessel of intense heat and transformation — and began what she describes as "a two-year argument with batik." The argument was about context. Batik in Malaysia had been relegated to formal occasions and tourist shops. Amirah wanted to put it on bodies in motion, in cities, in the everyday. Her first collection — 12 pieces, all hand-stamped batik in contemporary cuts — sold out in 48 hours via Instagram DM. "Fashion has a habit of stripping craft from its context," she says. "I'm trying to do the opposite — put the context back in." The Batik Coord Set is available now. No two sets are identical.

12 February 2025 · 6 min read

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Stories from the Region Independent Voices Dispatch from Southeast Asia Stories from the Region Independent Voices Dispatch from Southeast Asia

Bangkok After Hours

There is a bar in Sukhumvit where everyone seems to be carrying the same natural canvas tote. At some point in the evening you stop noticing the bag and start noticing the person carrying it. That is the Gentlewoman effect. The Bangkok-based label began as a print magazine celebrating Thai women in creative fields. The totes, pouches, and accessories came later — requested by readers who kept asking about the bags seen on editorial shoots. They were never meant to be a product line. Now they outsell the magazine. This photo essay, shot over three evenings across Bangkok's creative neighbourhoods — Ekkamai, Ari, Charoen Krung — documents the Gentlewoman tote in its natural habitat. Architects, illustrators, editors, chefs. The bag is not a statement. It is the absence of one. The Gentlewoman Tote v2 and Canvas Pouch are available now on CCC. The v2 features a new wax coating for the humidity.

ThailandPhoto EssayNight Culture

3 min read

Story · Identity

George Town Forever

The founders of Penang Street Co. grew up on the island, moved to KL for work, and started making clothes to feel less far away. That's the entire brief. Every tee is a postcard that moves. Wei, Faiz, and Danny met in primary school in George Town. They ended up in KL through different routes — architecture school, a banking grad programme, a startup that didn't work out. They started printing tees on weekends in 2018, selling them to friends at RM 50 a piece from a Myvi in a Bangsar car park. The designs reference specific streets, hawker stalls, and murals. The Lebuh Armenian Long Sleeve is named after the street that became globally famous for its painted murals. The Penang Graphic Tee references the clan jetties of Chew Jetty. These are not generic heritage graphics. They are arguments for a specific place, made by people who are no longer there. "Penang is complicated," Wei says. "It's beautiful and it's being gentrified and the people who made it beautiful are being priced out. We can't fix that. We can make sure people don't forget what it felt like before." The Penang Graphic Tee and Lebuh Armenian Long Sleeve are available now.

MalaysiaPenangIdentity

5 min read

Opinion · Supply Chain

The Ethics of the Drop

The "limited drop" is fashion's most powerful weapon for generating demand. It is also, when done badly, a factory overproduction event disguised as scarcity. Here is how we think about it differently. The mechanics of a drop are simple: announce a product, create anticipation, release in limited quantity, sell out fast. The cultural cachet comes from scarcity — the feeling that you got something others couldn't. Drops work because they are effective marketing. But the supply chain reality is often ugly. "Limited" editions are frequently not limited at all. The factory produces 5,000 units. 2,000 go to the drop. The remaining 3,000 are held back, sold later at discount, or destroyed. The scarcity is constructed at the retail layer; the production is not constrained. At CCC, every drop is genuinely limited because the vendors we work with are genuinely small. Our vendors produce between 10 and 50 units per SKU. That is the production run. There is no warehouse of extras. When it sells out, it is gone. What responsible limited releases look like: production quantities tied to actual demand signals, no hidden inventory, clear communication about restock timelines, and factories that are paid fairly regardless of how quickly the drop sells. We are not perfect at this. But it is the standard we are building towards.

SustainabilityOpinionSupply Chain

7 min read