Homegrown womenswear brand Ong Shunmugam makes further headway into the realm of home design with its colourful array of rattan furniture and homeware, launched as part of its Suvarnabumi collection. We offer the first look:
While many of us had mixed results at making the most of our time indoors, homegrown fashion designer Priscilla Shunmugam was remarkably productive; the founder of local fashion brand Ong Shunmugam designed her brand new rattan collection while in London during the Covid-19 lockdown period earlier this year.
Set to launch tomorrow on September 19, it’s also the first-ever furniture range by the brand. Comprising 13 pieces of furniture and home accessories, the collection includes armchairs, a dining table, decorative screen, baskets, trays and planters; all items will be available for pre-order on the Ong Shunmugam website.
(Related: Singapore Fashion Brand Ong Shunmugam Launches Suvarnabumi Tableware Line)
Crafted as a continuation of the Suvarnabumi home collection, these handmade rattan pieces are true to the designer’s eclectic style, celebrating both the beauty of the material and her love of patterns; Shunmugam had previously debuted her 11-piece tableware range last December.
“We tried our best to take a different path by ignoring the common references of rattan furniture and upping the design value and differentiation quotient in a way that feels instinctual to us,” says Shunmugam, of the new collection.
“Most of our pieces had no template to build upon, meaning we had to draw from scratch and the craftsmen had to build from our drawings. We also introduced the use of foreign elements like jacquard fabrics and batik in particular, and challenged the craftsmen with technically demanding requests to merge materials and structures together in ways that hadn’t been attempted before.”
(Related: Priscilla Shunmugam Of Ong Shunmugam Launches Diffusion Line, OM)