Angelynn Tan, 37, Eco-textile designer and full-time lecturer

She creates clothes made of bamboo

Creating beauty out of unexpected things

On a random visit to Sungei Road back in 2005, Angelynn, a full-time fashion and textile design lecturer at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, came across some 1930s shoe buckles and made them into necklaces.

The project became the first in a chain of experiments which involved recycling everyday household objects. Plastic bags were melted, then used to create textured prints on T-shirts. “Melting plastics wasn’t exactly very eco-friendly,” she laughs. “But at least I was recycling!”

Blazing a bamboo trail

Angelynn was actually the first female designer to use bamboo fabric in Singapore. And it was Angelynn’s business collaborator, Jay Chong, who discovered it while in Thailand in 2007. Impressed that something so soft could have come from bamboo, Angelynn was determined to use it to create a clothing collection, despite the fact that the bamboo fibre cost 20 per cent more than normal cotton.

“It is expensive to manufacture in small quantities. But someone has to start, or awareness about this fabric will never grow,” she says. Her first eco-collection was launched in 2008, under her label, Logo.

Why bamboo clothes are “eco-friendly”

“It disintegrates by itself, so it doesn’t stay in the ground and cause pollution,” says Angelynn. “It’s also perfect for our climate.” Her customers agree – once they got used to the idea of bamboo fabric, they started snapping up her pieces. Plans are now in the pipeline to use wood fibres from India for a second eco-line, which will be launched at the end of this year.

Angelynn’s first eco-collection has sold out. She can be reached at [email protected] for more info.

>> Olivia Choong: She matchmakes single greenies

	Get a copy of the May 2010 issue of Her World, Singapore’s No. 1 women’s magazine. Her World published by SPH Magazines is available at all newsstands now.