Aijek’s sustainable second act

DANELLE Woo does not fancy herself an environmentalist. But a single visit to a Cambodian dumpsite in 2021 was enough of a reckoning for the former high-flying fashion designer.

The trash heaps were taller than her. Stray dogs relieved themselves on the mounds.

Young women in the neighbouring village complained of illness even as their families eked out a living by sorting the rubbish – a muck of plastics, wires, scrap and, to Woo’s dismay, clothes.

During the nine years she ran her international brand Aijek from 2010 to 2019, the knowledge that she was generating waste stayed at the back of her mind.

Looking out at that wasteland, two years after shuttering her label, she saw the consequences of unchecked production for the first time.

That trip marked the “end of fashion as I had known it” and the start of a new commitment to sustainable design, she tells The Straits Times in an exclusive interview. The next time, if there is one, would be different.

Seven years after her shock hiatus, Woo is relaunching Aijek, having finally worked out how to sell clothes without adding to the world’s waste.

The second incarnation of Aijek, debuting on Sept 24, will deal exclusively in natural fabrics that are biodegradable.

Running her hands over samples from her upcoming collection – a bluebell top, a drop-waist minidress – the 47-year-old says: “Everything is plant-based fibre. Because the key is that after the lifespan (of the textile) is up, it can return back to the soil. You can’t have even 1% of polyester.”

She would know. In early 2025, fed up with the Catch-22 of wanting to design without harm, Woo launched an experiment.

She buried samples of nine different fabrics in a shallow trench beside the curry leaf plant in her father’s garden.

Six months later, she combed the soil looking for the cotton, tencel and linen swatches but found no trace of them. Only a recycled polyester-cotton blend cloth remained.

“That closed the loop for me to feel that maybe there is a way to go back and create again, to continue designing in a more meaningful and intentional way,” she says.

“I’ve always wanted to come back. I just didn’t know how to.”

The new ban on synthetics means she has had to give up her former speciality, lace, which is often made from polyester.

Instead, Woo now works with Balinese artisans to use kerawang. The centuries-old Indonesian cutwork embroidery technique recurs throughout her 22-piece collection in the form of original lotus motifs, both in bud and in bloom.

Intricate patterns are drawn and then embroidered with traditional foot-operated sewing machines, as the threads used in modern machines are too thick for this fine work, Woo explains.

Sections of fabric are then cut by hand to create the delicate openwork, which resembles lace.

Out with the old

The lotus pod symbolises a metamorphosis for Woo and her brand. In her first rodeo, Woo concentrated on dressy occasionwear, with a popular bridal line.

For her comeback, she is taking it casual, mirroring her more relaxed attitude and new lifestyle as she splits her time between Singapore and Bali.

It also chimes with the post-pandemic turn towards comfortable dressing, she says.

At its peak, Aijek worked with 15 factories, pulled in close to S$4mil (US$3.16mil) in annual revenue and was stocked in about 200 stores across Asia and the United States, including Tangs in Singapore and global household-name retailers such as Anthropologie, Shopbop, Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale’s in the United States.

The brand was feted locally for its success abroad. In 2017, it represented Singapore at the Asia Fashion Federation in Hangzhou, China.

Now, Woo is content with four Bali-based factories, whose owners and employees she knows by name and with whom she can share a meal.

She will operate online, opening her home studio for customer visits by appointment only.

Each new drop will be small. Though she has already designed collections up to a season ahead, the combined number of pieces is still less than the 200 that Bloomingdale’s once commissioned from her.

The modest start is a rejection of the growth principle that once drove her womenswear empire.

On her decision to close shop in 2019, Woo says: “There was this tension between doing wonderful, successful business and not having time for myself. I had no time for family and Kai (my son).”

Woo had been jetting between an office in Shanghai – where Aijek was founded in 2010 – brand headquarters in Singapore and a showroom in New York so often that she would wake up not knowing which city she was in.

“According to my friends, I was not (home) half the year, which means for half the year Kai did not have a mom,” she adds.

“At that point, growth took on a new meaning for me. It got (to a stage where) I didn’t feel satisfaction from growing the business any more. Even if I had gotten into Saks Fifth Avenue, it would have meant nothing.”

Rather, she began to crave time, the currency required “to live, breathe and stop the chase”.

Once she squared up to that, quitting was easy.

New beginnings

During the seven-year interregnum between old and new Aijek, she watched her son become a teenager, attended classes on motherhood, surfed, worked out, travelled and used her SkillsFuture credits to learn how to draw things other than clothes.

“It was very therapeutic, getting lost in time and doing something unconnected to a KPI (key performance indicator), not for a bigger collection, growth or scale. I learnt how to play again,” she says.

Now, she has had her fill of rest and all the “puzzle pieces” are in place for Aijek’s return, she says. “I’m happy with who I am, Kai is 18, and I’ve found a way to make business sustainable.”

The hardest part of returning is adjusting to the age of social media. Her old playbook of single-minded focus on products and doing trade shows is, by her own admission, obsolete, and Woo is scrambling to learn the codes of the TikTok epoch.

No matter, for she gets to create again. Throughout the hiatus, Woo never stopped designing. Within three months of her break, she was hankering to return to her craft.

Anything could set her off. On her travels, it was the vivid colours and textures of Spain and Morocco. Often, she would go shopping and return with nothing except ideas on how to better the merchandise on the racks.

She says: “Even now, I miss designing, as I do the other parts of running a business – the pop-ups, the channels, distribution (and) social media.

“I already have a lot more new ideas in my head. It’s very silly to say, but after I finish a collection, I want to burn it and start all over again. Figuratively, anyway.

“As a designer, it’s always in my head that I have to do something better.” — The Straits Times/ANN