The Lasalle Graduate Fashion Show 2026 Gave Us Hope
The show took place at an unexpected location: the soon-to-open Cantonment train station. Located underneath the old Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, you could read it as a metaphor for bridging the past and the future — which is what these designers did at their graduation show.
It’s May and for art school studetns, that usually means graduation season. Two days ago, Lasalle College of The Arts staged its graduate show for the graduands of the BA (Hons) Fashion Design and Textiles programme, showcasing the collections of thirteen designers.
That’s always a highly anticipated affair in the fashion industry, but this year, there was a twist: the show was held within the soon-to-be-opened Cantonment train station, instead of the usual location on the school’s grounds.
Watching the models descend from the escalators and walking as (empty) trains whizzed by, set against a buzzy soundtrack of the usual train announcements, certainly added a vibe to the whole affair. It felt like a moment in Singapore’s fashion history; can’t quite recall a fashion show ever being held in a train station here to date.
A look at the show’s unusual venue: the new Cantonment train station, which is set to officially open to the public in July. Whoever had the idea of staging the show there ought to be given a substantial pay raise.
Yes, some commentators were (too) quick to throw comparisons to the recent Chanel pre-fall 2026 show that was famously held at a NYC subway platform, but for Lasalle, the choice of the locomotive setting came from a rather different place.
“Singapore is a hub for much of the innovation coming out of Asia, a place where a multitude of cultures come together and are celebrated,” says Circe Henestrosa, head of the School of Fashion. “We hope this show represents the potential that the city has to be a hub where new modes of fashion-making emerge.”
Designer Quek Yu Tong (in middle) with models attired in her clothes, which were inspired by the Chinese mythological character Ne Zha but re-interpreted for the year 3100, where cultural memory has been all but lost.
It was apt then, that the show was titled DE:CENTERING, as a nod to how designers in the region are drawing from local contexts, traditions and narratives, instead of adhering to long-entrenched Western fashion systems.
If you ask us, it’s definitely a step in the right direction and builds on a movement we’ve noticed in recent years; the strongest designers and creatives are the ones who investigate their own backgrounds and use that to develop their own voices; it’s about having a point of view that hasn’t been watered down to fit the global flattening of aesthetics we’re seeing everywhere.
Eng Li Wen’s band of vagabond warriors inspired by the Sungei Road flea market.
On that end, the graduands’ collections offered pretty nifty takes on narratives that felt close to home. Eng Li Wen’s 结霜桥 Gek Sng Kio, was named after vanishing communal spaces in Singapore, such as the now-defunct Sungei Road flea market, and the tarp-esque fabrics he employed to create his designs seem to nod to those that might have once been found there.
Nurul Izza Binte Rahmat offered a more contemporary take on modest wear, which she says is lacking in Singapore.
Nurul Izza Binte Rahmat offered modest wear that was both elegant in its brutalism-inspired drapery as well as innovative; the user gets to tweak the placement of the headwrap through cleverly hidden magnets.
Ahmad Hanif Bin Ahmad Jamal’s Silent Pirouette collection was one for the softcore girlies.
Another stand-out was Ahmad Hanif Bin Ahmad Jamal’s Silent Pirouette collection, inspired by the designer’s childhood dream of being a ballet dancer; it was an extravagant yet tender middle finger to the rigid gender binaries of the ballet world. He also received the Innovative Hairstyle award from the event’s partner Dyson.
This new wave of regional pride is further backed by the school’s new Equatorial Fashion Research Lab, a dedicated space launched this January. Think of it as a think tank for fashion theorists, researchers and practitioners to conduct research based on the region’s actual lived realities, because let’s be real: fashion theory has been dominated by the Northern Hemisphere for a long time.
Yep, a lot of exciting things are happening. If you missed the subterranean drama at Cantonment, don’t fret. You can catch the designers’ collections at Lasalle’s Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore galleries from May 22 to June 3, 12pm - 8pm daily, as part of the The Lasalle Show Exhibition 2026, a larger showcase for all of the school’s different programmes (read: not just fashion). We’ll see you there.