Walk through any Singapore mall today and you’ll witness something remarkable: the same locally-made colourful tote appearing on investment bankers, art students, and tourists alike. That bag? It’s from Beyond The Vines, and it’s part of their latest collaboration that’s quietly rewriting the rules of what Singapore fashion can achieve on the global stage. The Beyond The Vines x Liberty Fabrics collaboration, launched in June 2025, represents more than just another fashion partnership—it’s a cultural stress test that reveals uncomfortable truths about Singapore’s creative aspirations and the price of global recognition.
This collaboration between a decade-old Singapore brand and a 150-year-old British textile house raises critical questions about authenticity, cultural identity, and what happens when local brands chase international validation. The answers aren’t as straightforward as the marketing suggests.
The Unlikely Partnership That Exposes Industry Dynamics
When Beyond The Vines announced their collaboration with Liberty, industry observers noted the unusual power dynamics at play. Here’s a Singapore brand that started as an e-commerce experiment in 2015, suddenly partnering with a British heritage house that’s dressed everyone from Oscar Wilde to contemporary royalty. The pairing seems almost too convenient—a perfect narrative of local-brand-makes-good that Singapore’s creative community desperately wants to believe.
The Beyond The Vines x Liberty Fabrics collection transforms the brand’s signature Crunch Carryall Series alongside everyday accessories like laptop sleeves, lunch bags, and pouches. But beneath the surface lies a more complex story about creative compromise and cultural adaptation. The collaboration features three Liberty prints: Clio, a ditsy floral motif from the 1930s reflecting Liberty’s woodblock printing heritage; Archive Gingham, a patchwork of hand-painted florals in translucent check patterns; and Nell, Annie & May, a flowering meadow with deliberate imperfections that reference Liberty’s early print experiments.
Each print carries decades of British cultural history, raising questions about whether this collaboration celebrates Singapore’s creative identity or simply packages it for international consumption.
The Marketing Machine vs. Creative Reality
The launch event at Goodwood Park Hotel’s Greenhouse Garden revealed the careful choreography behind modern fashion collaborations. Beyond The Vines created an experiential space featuring interactive elements—search-and-find game cards that guided visitors through each Liberty print story, complete with educational fabric walls showcasing design details.
While the event generated significant social media engagement, it also highlighted the gap between brand storytelling and industry reality. The emphasis on “experience” and “education” reflects broader trends in fashion marketing, where brands must constantly justify their cultural relevance to increasingly skeptical consumers.
The question becomes: does this collaboration represent genuine creative evolution, or sophisticated brand positioning designed to capture global attention?
Singapore’s Creative Ecosystem Under Scrutiny
The Beyond The Vines x Liberty Fabrics partnership illuminates fundamental challenges within Singapore’s creative landscape. Despite world-class design education, substantial government support, and sophisticated consumer markets, local creative brands have historically struggled to achieve meaningful international recognition.
This struggle stems partly from Singapore’s efficiency-driven culture, where creative pursuits often feel secondary to measurable economic outcomes. The result has been a creative ecosystem that’s technically proficient but sometimes lacks the cultural confidence necessary for global competition.
Beyond The Vines, founded by Daniel Chew and Rebecca Ting, has built its reputation on functional minimalism—designs that address Singapore’s climate and lifestyle while maintaining aesthetic sophistication. Their approach suggests that international appeal doesn’t require abandoning local relevance, but achieving this balance remains challenging for most Singapore brands.
The Economics of Creative Compromise
Building a creative brand in Singapore involves navigating brutal economic realities. Commercial rent in prime retail locations remains among Asia’s highest, while the limited domestic market forces brands to think internationally from day one. These pressures create environments where creative vision must constantly negotiate with commercial viability.
Beyond The Vines has addressed these challenges through strategic patience, building slowly through e-commerce and carefully selected retail partnerships rather than rushing into expensive flagship stores. This approach enabled them to maintain design integrity while developing the financial stability necessary for ambitious collaborations.
However, this model raises questions about accessibility and scalability. Can other Singapore brands replicate this approach, or does it require specific resources and timing that most creative ventures lack?
The Cultural Trade-offs of Global Recognition
The Liberty collaboration highlights careful considerations that occur when local brands seek international partnerships. While the partnership provides Beyond The Vines with global credibility and distribution channels, it also requires adaptation to international aesthetic and commercial standards.
The three Liberty prints chosen for the collaboration—Clio, Archive Gingham, and Nell, Annie & May—represent British cultural heritage dating back decades. When applied to Beyond The Vines’ contemporary silhouettes, they create products that feel simultaneously local and international, but the balance tips noticeably toward international recognition.
This dynamic reflects broader tensions within Singapore’s creative community between maintaining authentic local identity and achieving global relevance. The Beyond The Vines x Liberty Fabrics collaboration succeeds commercially, but whether it advances Singapore’s creative culture remains debatable.
Industry Response and Future Implications
Since the collaboration’s launch, several Singapore brands have announced international partnerships or expansion plans. While this suggests increased confidence within the local creative community, it also raises concerns about whether these brands are developing authentic creative voices or simply following a perceived formula for international success.
The challenge for Singapore’s creative ecosystem lies in supporting brands that can achieve global recognition while maintaining cultural authenticity. The Beyond The Vines model offers valuable lessons about strategic patience and quality execution, but it may not be replicable for brands lacking similar resources or market positioning.
The Uncomfortable Questions
The success of the Beyond The Vines x Liberty Fabrics collaboration forces difficult questions about Singapore’s creative future. Are local brands developing genuine creative authority, or are they becoming increasingly sophisticated at packaging themselves for international consumption?
The collaboration undoubtedly represents a significant achievement for Singapore’s creative sector, demonstrating that local brands can secure partnerships with established international houses. However, the long-term impact depends on whether this success translates into broader creative confidence or simply reinforces existing patterns of seeking external validation.
Beyond the Success Story
The Beyond The Vines x Liberty Fabrics collaboration represents both achievement and challenge for Singapore’s creative community. It proves that local brands can achieve international recognition and secure prestigious partnerships, but it also highlights the complex negotiations required to maintain creative authenticity while pursuing global relevance.
As Singapore’s creative ecosystem continues evolving, the Beyond The Vines example offers valuable insights about strategic positioning and quality execution. However, the broader question remains: can Singapore develop a creative culture that values local innovation as much as international recognition?
The answer will likely determine whether collaborations like Beyond The Vines x Liberty Fabrics represent another chapter in Singapore’s creative maturation or simply more sophisticated versions of the same validation-seeking patterns that have historically limited local creative development.
For now, the collaboration stands as a complex achievement—commercially successful, culturally significant, and strategically brilliant, yet still leaving fundamental questions about Singapore’s creative identity unresolved. Perhaps that ambiguity is precisely what makes it worth examining.
For those inspired by this meeting of Singaporean design and British heritage, the Beyond The Vines x Liberty Fabrics collection is available at all Beyond The Vines boutiques and online at beyondthevines.com.
