CAPSULE 2009

CAPSULE 2009 exhibits over 50 garments, magazines and ephemera from Singaporean designers and brands in the 2000s. Taking 2009 as a prompt, the exhibition highlights designers who launched their labels independently and as part of the first batch at fashion incubator Parco Next Next. This is not a retrospective but a personal archive of objects that physically anchor Josiah Chua and Daniela Monasterios-Tan’s memories of Singapore fashion as hopeful fashion students and eventually, as industry practitioners. 

With this exhibition, they write themselves and their predecessors back into a collective fashion history, adding to the genealogy of independent fashion design in Singapore. The exhibition will feature pieces from labels active in the 2000s such as Woods & Woods by Jonathan Seow and alldressedup designed by Sven Tan. The independent spirit, networks and global ambitions encapsulated by this generation paved the way for collectives such as +Nine, and government initiated incubator Parco Next Next (2010-2014). While many of these labels are no longer active, their influence is felt in a tightly knit creative industry like Singapore where designers often become lecturers, mentors or cross over to adjacent creative disciplines. These objects are remnants of a collective desire for fashion expression and reflect aesthetic sensibilities, constraints and the social zeitgeist of Singapore’s recent history.

Adjacent to the exhibition is a study collection–a space where visitors are encouraged to have an intimate encounter with these objects through guided garment analysis. CAPSULE 2009 invites a collective appreciation of creative labour and connection. 

Programmes

Panel: Josiah Chua & Daniela Monasterios-Tan

Saturday 8 October 2022, 2PM - 3PM

Find out about the process of recollecting and conceptualising CAPSULE 2009 with Daniela Monasterios-Tan and Josiah Chua in conversation with Fashion On Display founder and curator Weiqi Yap.

Free admission.