After 17 years, one of our island’s favourite brands is totally shuttering their business, including newly-opened stores

The Closet Lover store in Tampines One. Photo: Chin Boh Kay

One of The Closet Lover’s newest stores opened at Tampines One in the third quarter of last year. About eight months later, the 17 years old brand announced on Instagram that they shall be closing the closet door for good on 15 June. The store is currently conducting sales at their three remaining outlets, including Bugis Junction and Takashimaya Shopping Centre. The news of their impending closure broke this morning at about the time Singaporeans were going to the polling stations to vote in the GE amid heavy morning showers. By the afternoon, all three stores appeared busier than usual. At their Tampines One store, the same IG message was shared on the LED screen that was installed to the right of the entrance.

The founders and sisters Bertilla and Brianna Wong announced on IG that The Closet Lover has to be closed because of the health of both of them. They revealed that they were suffering from lupus, an autoimmune disease that, according to the Mayo Clinic, “causes inflammation in various body systems”. But it was the older sister Brianna Wong whose condition worsened three months ago during a holiday in Seoul, The Straits Times reported. Bertilla Wong disclosed that it was she who “persuaded her [sister] to end the business first to recuperate because I want my sister to live.” The younger Wong also shared that they did consider selling the business, but later changed their minds as they felt that the brand is too tethered to the two of them and there is “no point” if they need to continue to lead after the sale.

Sisters Bertilla and Brianna Wong. Photo: theclosetlover/Instagram

The Closet Lover, like many other contemporary Singaporean brands emerged as a blogshop, hosted on LiveJournal (now essentially a Russian social media site). That was in 2007, two years after BonitoChicco was born (also on LiveJournal) and three years after it morphed into Love, Bonito. The Wong sisters told The Business Times in 2021 that they “started the company purely as a hobby when we were still students”. Like most fledgling blogshops back then, The Closet Lover sold inexpensive clothes that reflected the founder-sisters’ personal tastes. In 2018, they told the media that both of them had “different styles” and they offered “a wide range of apparels that cater to the sweet girl-next-door, as well as the ladies who prefer minimalist and classic pieces.” The brand, even after going multi-platform in their retail model, remained vague in their asthetic message.

In 2015, The Closet Lover opened the first of their physical stores in Bugis Junction. The debut space complemented the mall’s positioning that focused on affordability. Although already in their eighth year of operation, the brand was tenacious in sticking to the chosen sweetness and the girl-next-door innocuousness. As they had said, they have not “made any bad bets on the company”. They kept to their approachable silhouettes and were especially exuberant when it came to prints. The pocket-friendly pricing remained too. In sum, their merchandising strategy was not unlike the other blogshop brands slowly moving away from their singular digital presence—an indefinable mishmash.

The Closet Lover participated in a multi-label mall show at Tampines One. Photo: Chin Boh Kay

The Wong sisters, in the early years, were selling clothes they wanted to wear by sourcing from wholesalers (even now, they shared on Facebook that theirs are “styles that reflect [their] charmingly feminine and fun personality”). Along the way, they decided they wanted to get into the “design” aspect of the business. It is not immediately clear if they really designed anything since they have not distinguished their merchandise from other blogshop-made-good brands. In one of their earlier IG posts, they wrote that their clothes were “thoughtfully designed with and for you”. While some media reports claimed that they began to “manufacture their own apparel”, it is doubtful they did. It is likely they worked with a manufacturer to produce what they desired.

It was thought that The Closet Lover did relatively well. At their peak, they operated four freestanding stores here, as well as two in Malaysia (closed in 2021) and two franchise-businesses in Cambodia (closed last year). In one IG post, the brand wrote: “What began as a humble passion project has grown into something far greater than we ever imagined.” Still, in a crowded market, The Closet Lover has not sufficiently set itself apart or cultivated a strong brand identity. When their Tampines One store opened in September 2024, they were sited together with two other comparable labels, side by side, in the same row: The Editor’s Market and From There On. Hitherto, it is hard to tell them apart. Their names comprise three words; they sold similar products, in similar colours and of similar price points. There is clearly comfort in blending in.