You’ve seen the eleven-letter noun, spread as two lines across tote bags. But who is she, really? Or, what?

The Gentlewoman flagship store in Siam Square, Bangkok

The Gentlewoman is everywhere—next to you, in front of you, behind you. But she is not a real person, not even an avatar. Or a ghost. Usually, she’s a paper bag. Or, a cotton canvas tote. Yes, that one. You have seen it (them?). Or probably carried one. She could, of course be a hat, a T-shirt, a skirt, a dress; even a mug. But as a bag, there’s no mistaking her as Gentlewoman. She is truly ubiquitous, which attests to her intriguing popularity. Gentlewoman is cheap. For 590 baht (or about S$22), she can easily find herself on many arms. She wears her name visibly, its four-syllable, full-cap, all-black text in a serif font that beckons, but not quite as a woman of particularly mild disposition. Gentlewoman is not discreet, it seems to be shouting at you whenever you see her. The bold font made sure of that. You could spot her a mile away. Yet, her name, split into two words/lines on the bag, seems to want you to stress the ‘Gentle’, and desires you to believe that she is. Or, at least, the one carrying it is.

At Gentlewoman, the bag did not came first, but it sure was the first to catch on. So popular it has been on our shores that it even inspired a dedicated Instagram page, gentlewomanbaginsg. The cotton canvas tote has since spawned other versions and other silhouettes, in different fabrics. Many still sport the big, bold, unmistakable name. To be certain, the shouty moniker stumped us initially. When we saw the bag for the first time, sometime last year, not long after the lifting of the mandatory wearing of face masks, we thought that it was a GWP (gift with purchase) that came with the subscription of the British magazine The Gentlewoman, bi-annual sister publication to Fantastic Man. But when we looked clearly, the name was missing the article ‘The’. Moreover, the typeface is different. What appeared on the tote (and still does) is fancier. Until an SOTD reader returned from Bangkok with a purchase of that very tote for her sister did we know of its at-first-surprising provenance.

The popular ‘GW cotton tote’, with their unapologetic, shouty branding

Born in Bangkok in 2018, nearly a decade after the birth of the magazine that shares the same name, Gentlewoman is unabashedly a fast fashion brand, conceived—as the label frequently described its corporate aim—“TO EMPOWER ALL FORMS OF FEMININITY, BEAUTY, AND INDIVIDUALITY” (their communication material is mostly written in full-caps, including their webpage, store signages, and even hangtags). And, yes, that was deafening. And on their website, not always easy on the eye. The label was founded by school friends Paeng Raya Wannapinyo, Siripa Rueangwut Thisakulcha, and Jitpon Siriwattana Maythangkul—the sole male of the triumvirate. All three were classmates when they were pursuing accountancy at Chulalongkorn University, but it is not known if they were best pals and had desired to be in a fashion business, together.

As with many fashion retail success stories these days, Gentlewoman came about when the face and spokesperson of the brand Ms Wannapinyo started an online clothing brand while working as an auditor. Her motivation then: She could not find the clothes she liked. Gentlewoman started as a “workwear brand”, Ms Wannapinyo told the Thai online business news site Capital. “At the time (beginning), we focused on what we wanted to wear,” she said. “It was not based on fashion. I did not see any trends then.” And added, it was “very working woman,” which sounded rather like Jaspal in their early days. But shopper needs changed alongside the progress of the COVID pandemic, and the brand had to re-pivot itself. As Ms Wannapinyo explained, “COVID was a turning point. We had opened only about a year ago, but we had to close. We had ‘formal’ clothes that could not be sold as people were at home. So I adjusted the brand to be one that’s more casual.”

New version of the popular tote, now in PVC

That Gentlewoman began as a line for working women to wear to their offices is a tad surprising. In Thailand, women are generally not restricted to dress codes when it comes to professional turnout, even less so for accountants. It is not clear if Ms Wannapinyo meant suits and shirts when she referred to “work wear”, but even with more executive-looking brands such as Asava (by the designer Polphat Asavaprapa), Thai womenswear, like those outside of Thailand, has been veering towards casual since at least a decade ago. These days—post-“work-wear”—Gentlewoman is not uniquely different from other Thai fast fashion brands such as Pomelo and CPS. Or, our own The Editor’s Market and Love, Bonito, but, perhaps, a tad better-made. Collaboration is what keeps Gentlewoman above its competitors, and brands that they have paired with have been all local, and they include higher-end labels such as Disaya and Kloset, and Asava.

For three founders with no applicable background and training in fashion, Gentlewoman has forged a seductive brand and engendered a considerable fan base willing to spend on their easily “accessible” (a description the brand is fond of using) merchandise. According to Thai media reports, in 2019, a year after the brand was launched, the company recorded a modest profit of 4 million baht (or about S$152,103). But just two years later, they hit 32 million baht. “Our team knew nothing in terms of fashion companies,” Ms Wannapinyo, admitted to Capital. “So I set everything up again myself”, including retail operations and backend systems, as well as the extremely rapid production cycle, which ensures that the stores—numbering 15 in Bangkok to date—would be stocked with new products weekly, a strategy that sustainability advocates generally condemns. There are, indeed, many items in the store, and it is easy to be overwhelmed. But, in the end, there are just clothes (and bags)—separates that, three weeks later, you’ll probably forget.

The Gentlewoman store at Centralworld

When we asked a Thai fashion-veteran-turned-Fintech-executive about Gentlewoman, we were told that the brand is most popular among tourist. “I don’t know any of my friends carrying their bags or wearing their clothes,” she told us. “Maybe, among Thais, the novelty of the brand has worn thin.” In a post in the Thai website Brand Case, Gentlewoman is described as “a Thai brand that foreigners compete to buy”. Two months ago, one report in the Thai daily Khaosod was headlined: “Stunned! Chinese people flocked to buy bags from Thai brand, fighting over them. You’d think they were giving them away for free.” This is somewhat ironic, considering that for the three founders, the initial idea was, as they often say to the local media, to “design clothes especially for Thai people.” One Thursday afternoon, in front of their 700-square-metre flagship, opened in 2022 and housed in the upper floors of an old shophouse in the spruced-up Siam Square—the city’s original hipster haven, we met a Filipino lass ladened with Gentlewoman shopping bags. That’s a lot of shopping, we commented. “Yes, everything is so nice,” she enthused. What did you buy? “Everything.” Bags? “Definitely!”

Gentlewoman has not released figures pertaining to the number of the one recognisable bags they have sold. But going by how frequently one is able to see women carrying the off-white cotton canvas tote alone, it is reasonable to assume the figure to be staggering. It is not clear why carrying a bag with such crudely visble branding is appealing. The brand name can be quite a misnomer. Gentlewoman fans are sometimes far from what the moniker of the brand suggests. At a time of un-gentle women, such as she who scolds nurses or those fighting over bags, perhaps there are the many who need a bag to affirm their gentleness, if not genteelness. But what is announced on a bag may not be what one adopts personally. During boarding on one SG-bound flight from Bangkok recently, a woman carrying that tote, and still burdened by two stuffed Gentlewoman paper bags frantically pushed her way through a crowded aisle so that she could squeeze her shopping in the overhead storage above her seat. The Gentlewoman text surrounding her was, at best, misleading.

Photos: Jagkrit Suwanmethanon