How Singapore brand Aupen took the fashion world by storm: founder Nicholas Tan explains the creation of instant ‘It’ bag the Nirvana – which boasts fans including Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé
Founder Nicholas Tan reveals how he used word of mouth to create an ‘if you know, you know’ buzz around his brand, and evolved Aupen into the mouse that roared
That’s exactly as Nicholas Tan, only recently revealed to be the brains behind the brand, would have it. When I first started seeing Aupen’s arm candy on A-listers two years ago, no one even knew it was a Singaporean brand, let alone who its enigmatic founder might be. Since Aupen’s official launch in late 2022, details surrounding both the brand and its founder’s identity have been kept top secret. This is presumably to drum up interest in the bags themselves, but it also makes a point about what kind of brand Aupen is – in essence, one that generates buzz because it doesn’t try to. Quiet marketing for quiet luxury, so to speak, operating solely on the basis of word of mouth, social media sleuths and the “if you know, you know” mentality.
Just a few days prior I had the opportunity to meet with Tan in Hong Kong to find out more about the man behind the mystery and discuss Aupen’s meteoric rise to “It” bag brand status. “We wanted to create a silhouette that would be timeless and not focused on having logos,” he tells me casually, looking as cool and effortless as the bags themselves. “Something simple and sleek – if a girl was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, she could just pop this on and make the entire … outfit immediately stand out.”
You can’t put someone like Tan in a box. The former national swimmer for Singapore is tall, strikingly handsome and could easily pass for a model – yet another vocation Tan has dabbled in over the years – but surprisingly has no formal design training. In other words, he’s completely unlike what many people had in mind for a brand so low-key and reserved, and also not the first candidate who’d come to mind when thinking of a fashion brand founder. That’s perfectly OK with Tan, who appears content with and even excited to be doing things differently, proving people wrong, and setting new expectations for what a bag brand – and a proudly Singaporean one, at that – should do.
“When we design a bag, we want it to be sculptural,” he says, slinging Aupen’s signature Nirvana bag – made in an asymmetrical shape with a golden, detachable charm acting as a counterweight on the slimmer end – over his shoulder. “This is a little different from some bags that are crossbody, or just completely collapse. When you put it on the table, you can put it next to your coffee and take a photo.”
It’s this kind of storytelling through silhouettes that first gave the brand near-instant global recognition – Tan proudly claims that all of Aupen’s celebrity endorsements are purely organic, not paid for – and has helped make it a success in a segment usually dominated by the Louis Vuittons and Chanels of the world.
“When I started I sent Aupen to everyone I knew,” he laughs, pointing out how Western countries and celebrities – not Singaporean or Asian KOLs – first made Aupen famous. “I do think it has to do with the openness of the West – how they are more open to new ideas and brands.” Tan, who studied biology at Harvard, agrees that his time in the US allowed him to ponder and explore different career paths, fostering an ambitious mindset that led him to believe that anything and everything was possible.