There was a time when many would have called Singapore's fashion scene backward - no cult labels and certainly no space for mercurial, rising designers. Sure, Orchard Road was a hotbed of big houses a la Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Dior or Prada but when it came to the new kids on the block like Alexander Wang, Jason Wu or Erdem Moralioglu, people either didn't know they existed or no retailer wanted to take a chance on them.

Not any more. Thanks to the efforts of several enterprising women with an eye for trends, local fashionistas now enjoy as much access to the likes of cult names Manish Arora and Dion Lee as they do to big labels like Fendi and Celine.

In fact, while big retailers such as Club 21 and FJ Benjamin have played a pivotal role in pumping up the local fashion scene, it has been the work of these women - all independent owners of multi-label boutiques - to spot rising talent overseas and take the financial risk to bring in labels that would otherwise never have made it to Singapore.

With International Women's Day coming up on Monday, BT Weekend takes a close-up look at these women tastemakers who have slowly but steadily changed the fashionscape in Singapore.

»ANN KOSITCHOTITANA | FRONT ROW
»PHOEBE LEONG | TRIBECA
»TAN BENG YAN | TYAN
»NANCY LIM | POIS


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This article was first published in The Business Times.