From KL to K-pop: How Malaysian fashion label Joe Chia won over S.Coups, Felix and other global stars
CNA
From a tiny Kuala Lumpur studio to 20 countries and K-pop fans, Joe Chia builds a slow, independent fashion universe rooted in craft, memory and intentional growth.
There are no investors behind Joe Chia. No celebrity creative director. No splashy campaigns or hype cycles. Just a Kuala Lumpur-based label that has, over 13 years, built one of the most compelling businesses in independent Asian fashion – stocked across 20 countries, and worn by a growing list of global tastemakers – including K-pop stars S.Coups of Seventeen and Felix from Stray Kids.
Not bad for a label that began in 2012 with a single rack of clothes at Malaysian fashion stylist Victor Goh’s Bangsar boutique and a tiny studio in Pudu. Back then, designer Joe Chia was in his mid-twenties, fresh from Singapore’s Raffles Design Institute, cutting and sewing everything himself, often through the night. Melissa Deng, his partner in business and life, joined him from the very beginning, taking on the brand’s operations.
They recall those early days with almost cinematic clarity: long nights packing orders by hand, sleeping on rolls of fabric, the smell of fried chicken drifting up from the mamak place (selling Indian Muslim food) downstairs at dawn. The dim stairwell leading to their small studio. And the morning they arrived to find it broken into – laptops, camera equipment, and cash gone.
“It took some time to recover from that, both financially and mentally,” said Deng. “But it taught us to be more aware and to just keep going.”
What they lacked in capital, they made up for in rigour: sharp tailoring, experimental proportions, natural fibres, and a monochrome sensibility that nodded to Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garcons but felt distinctly their own.
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